hey I don’t mean to **** in your cheerios but this was my experience. I came to NK for a short time, and I loved the QOL. The crews, layovers, etc was great! I thought twice about leaving just because of how happy I was with my QOL. That being said, I was also tired of hearing 10+ senior captains complain about FOs coming to NK to “get a type” and leave. They would even treated me like I didn’t know what I was doing in the airplane half the time. I got comments all the time like “so when are you leaving”… I had some conversations with many captains showing them how moving to a legacy carrier would be a better choice in the long run than staying at NK. As much as I loved NK, it was flawed. The model was flawed. The leadership was flawed. I showed captains the math on paper and I was laughed at. Many told me that the they knew for a fact NK would never disappear. Some told me I was dumb for jumping ship.
I struggled leaving at first cus I really enjoyed it there. Many times I thought I had made a mistake leaving. Funny thing, many of my colleagues that left, some felt like I did. But at the end of the day the math didn’t add up and I knew that eventually things would be better seniority wise and QOL wise at a different company… just took patience. I was as even called by two CPs before I left trying to convince me to stay. Saying that going to AA or DL was a massive mistake. They change their tune when they saw I was leaving to brown.
either way, many people were unkind to new FOs cus “you came here as a stepping stone”. I sure hope NK survives, it’s an awesome place. But if it doesn’t, I hope all those people who talked smack about so many FOs leaving will eat their words now. It’s aviation and nothing lasts forever, even I know that at brown.