Originally Posted by C340

Just some thoughts from someone who wanted to make a career at Alaska:

I don't understand Alaska's recruiting mentality. There is nothing particularly special about me as a candidate, but for a company with their attrition problem and stated hiring goals, it makes no sense to me to keep qualified and extremely interested candidates in the dark for months in this environment. I've got an Internal recommendation, attended a MTC event and received an interview recommendation, etc. and I haven't heard a peep from them. And it appears I am not the only one. Even if I did get an interview now, earliest class date is reportedly late fall, which is supposedly because they want to weed out those pilots trying to use Alaska as a stepping stone.

I gave up holding my breath and on Friday I applied to a fractional that I've been eying. I heard back first thing this morning with a phone screening, and they're flying me to HQ tomorrow to interview Wednesday. In stark contrast to Alaska, they are a company that is actually behaving in a way that is consistent with the fact that they need pilots. And their pilots have nothing but good things to say about how they are treated.

I just don't get it. But from what I've been reading over the past couple months, the claims about Alaska management being out of touch with regard to pilots and the current pilot environment seems to be proving itself true. Understaffed such that reports abound of 5-6 year FOs who cant drop or trade trips, yet management is just sitting on a pool of interested applicants but having them wait around...until they get tired of waiting and just go somewhere else? That's their strategy to attract pilots and reduce attrition? In this environment? Yikes.

I can't speak for anyone else, but for me, after deep-diving into the pros and cons of every airline out there, I can say that Alaska is somewhere I wanted to be long-term. And as someone in that position, I can say now that I'm becoming turned off to the idea. I feel for the current pilots negatively affected by understaffing because management is driving away people who would otherwise have helped alleviate that problem.

Looking forward to interviewing with a company that wants pilots, because the evidence suggests that Alaska just doesn't need them that bad.