It is regional mentality and the way things work impossible to ever get ours without a strong contract. We are too small or something. For whatever reason there is a segment here that is globally fairly senior but at the same time worse off than the most junior at any other airline. They are still sending 07 hire Captains out for TDY. Yet there are people upgrading out of initial GS. It is a strange place.

 

Did I read you correctly that NEW HIRES are upgrading to Captain out of initial ground school or did I just misunderstand?

 

Read back a few pages and on other Allegiant threads.

Seems many times the same issues get rehashed again and again.

But to quickly answer your question yes they are. Only because the other FOs want nothing whatsoever to do with a permanent TDY base that has zero work rules or ability to go home.

 

It’s a fantastic deal if you don’t mind living in the airplane for one to two years. Ahh, a lukewarm salisbury steak Christmas Eve dinner in your hotel room, because the Denny’s crew got the night off.

 

The training department is a bit messed up in terms of trying to come to grips with the number of people they are trying to train...completely not ready for such an influx. If you are hired into the training department, expect to work as much as they can find time for you to do so.

Standard for Allegiant, since the training costs have risen and the sim instructors are making serious bank, they allegedly were looking at making them work on salary as opposed to hourly. I haven't heard that this had any traction, but the training department would have imploded at this point. Currently, the sim guys seem to be the highest paid people on hourly rate, blocking well north of 100 (one guy had 225) hours in a month and most are paid at the CA rate. Being a sim instructor will also make you available for some of the ground training that goes on (emergencies, walk-around, etc).

I just got picked up to work as a systems ground instructor in addition to my FO duties and I expect to be abused for the near future. From what I was told, each "event" blocks just shy of 5 hours and you get 20 dollars of override pay each actual hour you are working.

 

Somewhere right now a dozen regional FO's just soiled themselves and stopped reading right there.

 

To understand the politics in the Training and Standards Department, one must first understand the attitude of upper management with respect to the value of training.

To put it simply, they don't. Training has always been, and always will be, a SOFT COST. Being that it produces zero revenue, it is viewed as a pesky expense to be minimized. You will never convince MG and his Merry Band of 24 Year Old MBA's that training is an invaluable insurance policy against the myriad of problems that the average line pilot will face due their cost cutting in OTHER areas (maintenance, to name one). During my tenure, they have tried everything from contract instructors to power-by-the-hour retirees (from other carriers). Each and every time the product has been atrocious and they always seemed to gravitate back towards line pilots. This is a good thing, because nobody knows our SOP's better than those who actually LIVE them every day.

Then they decided to implement Training Lines in which an instructor would not bid a line of flying for the month, but instead would be beholden to the Training Department for a minimum of 15 "events" throughout the month. This seems to work for a few instructors as you will generally have holidays and other days off that the Merlot solver wouldn't dream of awarding you. In fact, I know of one guy who has only bid once with Merlot since it was activated almost a year ago. But, as the above poster alluded to, those greedy pilots have been making too much money yet again, and now it's time to yank on the choke collar a bit. I suspect that any attempt to reduce instructor compensation will be met with several of them resigning and I hear they are even training old Pan Am instructors to assist as well. However, I think I know how that will turn out......

 

No soilage here, but it seems in order to upgrade that quickly you've got to become a Guinea pig and enter into a new base. Basically be single with no commitments, aka personal life. As a regional f/o I'd welcome an upgrade, especially at a LCC, but not at the cost of living in craphole FL or IWA.

 

Spot on, and kudos for not falling into the "aw, it can't be THAT bad" trap.

 

It’s a great deal if you want to throw the dice on our training department, hit the line with sub par mx, and all those other easter egg gotchas. And no contract protections. Have an incident/accident and be introduced to one of our own interrogation sessions in Vegas.

When we do get a contract, removing the safety department as far away from FOQA would by itself be worth union representation. As it stands now is simply a tool of management to push all liability to the pilot.


Thunder, clmp described our training department as it has always been. Just on a more amplified scale now. An airframe that is 30 years old and the manuals are unsat.. This place is a perfect example of the Peter Principle.