What is the truth about the QOL?
 

CJO holder here coming from a regional with over 1000 121 time. I keep seeing a decent amount of negative stuff regarding QOL on Facebook groups. On the other hand everyone I individually talk to has positive things to say. My question is, what is everyone’s main QOL issues? Why is everyone upset? It scares me to see that stuff on Facebook and makes me have reservations about coming. I do have a good QOL at my regional but upgrade is very far away and breeze has a base where I would want to live, several of them actually. Really stuck on what to do.

Do you want to go to a legacy ASAP or do want to work at Breeze? IMO if you’d want to go to a legacy going to breeze isn’t going to tip the scale much. I can tell you for certain there are a ton of FOs and captains at Breeze that are looking to abandon ship, so hopefully you have something that makes you stand out if you aren’t planning on staying long term.

If you are looking to stay around a long time a few things to consider that I wish someone told me:

Breeze has a lot of small bases and there isn’t a ton of movement within these bases. With that, if you get stuck commuting to a small base where breeze is one of the few airlines there, commuting is a nightmare, not only that, these small bases often do not have crash pads so you’ll often be buying a hotel.
if you want to upgrade, those smaller bases that you may have been able to hold as an FO will likely not be unavailable as a captain (unless you want to live in PVD)

The benefit more closely resembles a regional such as the sick time, 401K, vacation, soft pay etc. I’d also say The non rev benefits were much better at my regional.

The plane is cool, the crews are fun and there are people there that really believe in what breeze is trying to do and are actively trying to make it a better place. But I think ALPA is going to have an uphill battle with management. DN is openly anti union, the rest of leadership is mostly from allegiant so do with that information what you will.

There is still quite of bit of growth to happen but atleast when I was there it was slowwww growth, every week on the pilot call we’d hear how airbus is delaying deliveries again or some plane is down, so it felt like 1 step forward 2 step back. Big picture wise I think they have 90 220s on order with an option for 30 more. If they get 120 aircraft that’s roughly the size of Allegiant, so unless they eventually get acquired by someone else or they have a secret stash of airbus or 195 E2 orders they’ll be a small player in the grand scheme of things.

I punched out a while ago, so take everything I said with a grain of salt, but I keep in touch with my classmates who are still around so I’m somewhat still in loop. I’m sure someone will be around soon with a more up to date information.

Good luck with your decision!

im at a regional that is metered by my preferred legacy. It’s one of the reasons why I want to leave. The base I would prefer at breeze is one of the newer, very junior ones so that’s why I thought it might work. What is everyone’s complaints with QOL though? Is it dropping trips, flexibility? Are most of the complaints from commuters?

Unless your one of the top 5 or so FOs or Captains in that base , your chances of dropping or having your trip picked up are borderline non existent.

QOL = having a flexible, tradeable , negotiable schedule

Not likely to ever happen till DN acknowledges and works with the **** weak ALPA representation at breeze.

you know how your local McDonald’s has a 1.5 on yelp but when you go, the burgers are always fresh, fries always hot and the workers are always friendly? Why does it have a 1.5 online you wonder? It’s because people that are good with it are not going to say anything online, it’s just the negative stuff that gets posted. The base structure is a problem, lots of small bases instead of a few big ones. But that’s nothing you wouldn’t know about coming in, it’s what you make of it. It’s definitely better than any regional. Lots of growth but lots of unknowns too.

lol, what?

The few times I’ve gone to a 1.something place, mostly because it was the only place open it’s been ****.

This is probably the dumbest thing I’ve read this week, you should feel bad

A lot of the negative comments are commuters, but there are also very real complaints from non commuters, line holders and reserves alike on QOL, pay protections, PBS shenanigans and much more, some things they fixed while I was there, others still aren’t fixed.

I can tell you first hand I was absolutely hosed by the company on multiple occasions, especially during weather events like hurricanes. I won’t go into detail, but I eventually realized the gap between how I believe an employee should be treated and compensated, and what they believe was far too large and they will never seriously come to the negotiating table with ALPA to fix things. For reference, when I left DN was still fighting the idea that ALPA was even legitimate, he believed that the majority of pilots that voted them in had left so they were fighting in the courts about that. Not sure the outcome but that should tell you what the company thinks of organized labor and if they ever plan to come to the table.

Was your QOL okay if you lived in base? I do not plan to commute to an airline that is in no way commutable. Does it beat a regional? At my regional, 90% of the pilot group complains that they cannot drop anything, lack of premium time, always min days off, no commuter policy, lowest regional pay among other regionals, stupid work rules...i could go all day. Does breeze beat any of this? Asking truthfully.

I’ll let the current breeze pilots answer these questions. Only thing I’ll add is just because you plan on not commuting doesn’t mean that it won’t happen. If you’re willing to move to any base then you could have a good QOL, but you really need to consider that breeze runs really small bases, think 1 plane, 10-20 pilots per base small, that will significantly effect your QOL.

Honest opinion: If you plan to live in one of the bigger bases that are relatively common for new hires to go to, I think you will have a decent QOL. Most of the people I know that live in base are much happier than commuters (obviously!).

I know guys on reserve that live in base that hardly get called, so they are pretty happy to only have to go to work a few times a month, although it sucks if you are trying to build hours for your upgrade.

Previous posts have covered the downsides of scheduling, management…etc I will say that the people I flew with there are great, and you always looked forward to catching up with whoever it was on the crew list that day.

I have no idea what your regional is like, but Breeze can be a good place to wait for your legacy to call you, or if living in base works for you, then it could also be a good place to stay put and see where it can take you.