lowflying

Unless, you get the Airbus. At least, until they either open a SEA Airbus base or they go away...

Ala5ka

I can’t tell if this post is a joke or not?

Morale is incredibly low, growth plans are entirely in increasing seat numbers and not airframes, most new airframes go to horizon. Horrible schedules (worse than regional schedules) with zero flexibility. Toxic culture with anti pilot leadership.

This place is awful. Save yourself and go elsewhere.

WhenPigsFLy

There was a 8 year captain that just took a job at a major cargo company.

rickair7777

That's a junior CA anywhere. If it was FDX, and he lives in the east that would make sense. Short term paycut but living wage second year, long term pay gain. Plus QOL which is priceless.

DenainaPilot

What is competitively qualified these days?

Beta82

My suggestion is that you should only come here if you live in an Alaska base and you have never worked at another 121 carrier. This should make most deficient items at Alaska tolerable.

As I transition to everything Alaska I am consistently floored at how bad the contract is. Most things you think are normal in a 121 contract are absent; Things that are normal at a regional are absent. We are 3 or 4 contracts worth of provisions behind other major Airlines.

I hate to be the guy bashing on APC, but I’ve decided to leave if that makes what I say any more true. Do your homework, learn how bad things are compared to other airlines and then decide. If anything else, it’s a decent stepping stone. Almost every Airbus pilot wants to burn it to the ground, the 737 guys chose their bed to lay in so there is some psychology there that’s in play.

It’s a great pilot group. Everyone I’ve met has been really cool, but cool coworkers don’t pay the bills.

echelon

It honestly seems like every day I'm at work I realize something else about our newly inherited work rules that makes my jaw drop. Ever been kicked in the nuts every single day? That's what transitioning to L-AS's work rules is like.

The last 5 days of looking over our new schedules have been the most discouraging in my whole career. Airbus pilots are ALL losing something, with junior people likely losing almost every aspect of QOL they were previously able to not only look forward to, but count on. Gone are the junior lines of 17 days off of almost any legal combination of your choosing with 80+ hrs of credit and commutable trips, now we are forced to choose between prebuilt lines that are almost entirely uncommutable, almost all 75-78hrs with no ability to drop anything, with horribly unproductive trips with 40+ hour layovers for which we aren't paid, and many with only 13 or 14 days off. The fact that all of the lines are roughly the same credit, whether they are 18 days off or 13 days off, almost ensures that junior people will end up losing 3-5 days off per month, plus several more with the 6am reports and 1130pm release times factored in.

And good luck improving your schedule as a junior line holder, because all the trading is seniority based too. So being junior here just means getting fisted 3 separate times. As a junior line holder under PBS, I ALWAYS got the days off I asked for, including a week off over thanksgiving.

Every airbus pilot here is looking at a huge paycut, less opportunity to make extra credit, much fewer days off, lots more hotels, lots more wasted time on layovers, and MUCH, MUCH, more time spent bidding. I NEVER saw schedules this bad at either of the two diarrhea-tier regionals I spent time at prior to coming here. The fact that this is, and has been, business as usual for the Boeing side for quite a while is absolutely astounding to most of us because it is NOT NORMAL in this industry to have such absolute TRASH quality of life.

And while management is certainly partially to blame, who is responsible for many of the "fatigue mitigation" rules that are built into our pairing construction, independent of the CBA? Just saying. This needs to end NOW.

And to the OP, if it wasn't obvious, don't come here.

Arctichicken

I think everyone needs to grow some patience. Our management has promised us that when the MDs go away, our schedules will get soooo much better. Let us all bone up on Vision 2010 and wait juuuust a little more. Tick tock tick tock......

Packrat

They'll probably say the same thing about the Bus. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

lowflying

Our bad schedules are mostly Scheduling committee induced. Our Hours of service section and diversity of flying is similar to most of the other national airlines. There’s no amount of additional flying that will change the results. We need to start standing up for ourselves and get vocal or nothing is going to change.