If you must know, yes, I am here. Thankful to finally join a real airline, I am on the way out. I know this board is full of cheerleaders for M6, which is understandable considering a significant majority would not be able to get through real airline training – at AJT they will pass anyone here because it's a necessity.
I was just like you, at first excited for the opportunities that presented themselves here. They sell you on it, and the potential is there, but the realities of this place start to appear early on in training. I have talked to "new FOs" who have been in training for approximately six months. Most of them have their applications out already because they had to suffer from the person in charge of training.
I am not here to change your mind, like me, you will see the realities of this place within a few months. I kept the faith in hopes of this mystical contract that they can't seem to agree on. Lies like "the contract will be signed in August" or "we have flying built for the 757 in August" will soon start to make you realize it's nothing but the proverbial carrot. The union is now trying to beg them for "something" to give to the pilots that can no longer wait for a contract that is barely in the works- all politics to gain sympathy- with no end in sight.
For the most part, the airline has good men and women who come out and do the job to the best of their abilities. Most of them are great individuals but not very good pilots on the pilot side. So one starts to realize why they cheer so much for M6- their abilities will only get them so far- and would not be able to handle an actual training program at a real airline.
I started to understand that some people need this place, and aviation in general needs places like this to be a home for pilots like them. They are people who are working hard for their families and finances, and I do not blame them for skirting safety to make this place work. It starts to become evident that this place is just a money-making machine for the people on top and a place to house has-beens and pilots without any skill. All of this is fine. Most of the people who come to terms of these realities are leaving. For me, what did it was the fact that they finally fired the person in charge of training only to bring them back because they realized they needed them to keep the airline training going. Then they make the scab a check airman again because all the check airmen are leaving in droves. It is sad when they can't find skilled labor to run the airline, and they have to dig below the bottom of the barrel.
Why did I bring up other airlines to go to? Well, if you can do any type of arithmetic, you will find that Amerijet is the lowest-paid airline of its kind. Like the poster above me pointed out, a three-year FO at, Kalitta, ATI, Omni, and Atlas, amongst others, are making more than a captain here. We fly the same airplanes, same routes, same schedules. The 401k is a joke, and let's not even discuss the medical insurance. When you do your due diligence and sit down and compare to these airlines, you start to realize that you are missing out on thousands of dollars in your career.
Not to mention that every airline in the United States is ramping up training, and you will make more money anywhere by the second year than a captain here. I know going to a job is a personal choice, and your coming here will house you and meet your personal needs. I respect that. I came here with personal needs too, but I realized that everything is smoking mirrors. The day you raise any flags or complain, the union will mark you as a non-team player and make you an enemy very quickly. If you leave, you will be labeled an "idiot" because you didn't wait for the contract. If you stay and are unhappy, keep it to yourself. Once you hit a wall, remember everyone is hiring.
ATI, Kalitta, Atlas will offer a much better QOL and money. Good luck with your endeavors, especially in training, you will need it.
And as for salty, yes I’m very salty, I realized I was drinking the coolaid for far too long and regret coming here and wasting my time. No worries, I am leaving, good luck with all the false promises.

 

I blame them. There's no excuse for that. And it's a self-perpetuating problem. Nothing ever gets fixed if everybody turns a blind eye in the name of making it work. Force the company to fix it. When airplanes don't fly, that gets their attention.

Ameriyet briefly took over the route that I use for my commute a while back, and I decided there was no way I was taking them to work, whatever inconvenience it may cause me. I now feel fully justified in that decision.

Smoke and mirrors is bad enough. But when the mirrors themselves are smoking, well....

 

This is an absolutely outstanding summary of the situation at Amerijet.

The only addition I have is that the check airman scab, is the same check airman that was investigated by the FAA after he sent an email to the entire pilot group telling them that they could disregard the instructions on the approach plate, that he had disregarded the instructions on multiple occasions, and that you could disregard the instructions in order to 'legally" dispatch. Now he has been reinstated as a check airman. This is the type and level of training and professionalism you can expect at Amerijet. It is also an indication of the type of oversight provided by the FAA

It is honestly a miracle that they have never lost an airplane.

 

N608AX, my friend cazador… new name, same old talking points. Tip for all your internet trolls out there, if you change your handle change your talking points least you easily identify yourself. You must be bored at your mainline job, so bored in fact you just can’t let go of little old Happyjet. I mean how dare pilots from a little scumbag 36th street airline not follow your BS blindly since you come down from the mountain bearing the scrolls of knowledge. You know, I spoke to your membership committee(another great ALPA resource) and it seems you didn’t get called back to your airline like you told everybody, and you canceled your honey of a leave to tuck tail and return home. Thankfully you still have the internet to serve as your pulpit, we wouldn’t want you to get bored. I don’t have to change my name on here, everybody knows who I am and I’m not afraid of it, so be a man and do the same.

SEPfield: I hear Avelo is hiring street Captains, maybe you should apply… or how about shoot for the moon and apply for FedEx, I have some great contacts over there that may be able to help. I think you still have my number, give me a call sometime!!

Amerijet ain’t for everybody, and my recommendation for anybody that is unwilling to stick it out and see where it’s going is put your stuff in at somewhere you think best fits your lifestyle. Attrition is a problem for the entire industry, especially in our segment of it, however for the moment it has actually slowed significantly. Now that could change tomorrow but it’s starting to show that people are willing to take a chance with the change here. We are deep in section 6, and the pace of negotiations has picked up a lot of momentum since resuming after peak, but guys the company isn’t just going to give us a raise or significantly change conditions until they are negotiated. There is a process, it’s why we pay our dues, but I can say with all my heart your negotiating committee is working hard to get a contract that meets or exceeds our highest peer. Amerijet has its own system out of Miami, which presents a unique situation, but I believe the new CBA will have provisions that will not only make people that are expecting home basing to be happy but to also the ones that want to fly Miami equally happy.

Is it a madhouse here, of course it is, and it will be for a while. The current leadership team is just now getting started adding the resources to succeed, like hiring a crew scheduling manager, a new director of training, and various support personnel in flight operations. It takes time to build things, Rome wasn’t built in a day, but things are slowly but steadily improving. 757 proving runs will start next week, and table tops and the evac demo went off without a hitch, so they will be making airplane noises soon and allow us bring all of our Miami flying back in-house in the very near future. This is on top of the opportunities presented by the CEO this week during the town hall meeting.

There are people that have gotten held back for OE due to lack of check airman, however that is also improving. We have only lost two check airman, one went to a major airline and another decided this place wasn’t for him. Four of six new check airman have gotten qualified, and another class of six will be selected soon, so that backlog won’t continue. The new director of training built an AQP program at his last airline, and has committed to bringing our training program into the 21st century. Yes one CKA got his letter pulled for a short time, but was brought back with the FAA’s blessing, so maybe just maybe we can allow a person to learn a hard lesson and come back stronger than ever. Another upgrade class was just announced today, and at least one more planned for the very near future.

Aviation is a gamble for anybody, but there are a lot of people doing a lot of hard work to shed the image of a scumbag 36th street airline and make this place a real contender in the industry. My advice for anybody is if you don’t like it here, almost everybody is hiring so take your pick and head that direction and I wish you the best. However if it’s worth it to you to stick around and see what happens I think anybody that does will not regret their decision.

 

Woo Boy! Things do still seem rowdy at Amerijet. It appears not much has changed for the better from reading the past few months of posts. Looks like the constant is still SM targeting people who make him look bad, but he can’t even get that correct now.

Are people coming for the Twin Peaks and staying for the paper weight 757s now filling up the ramp on the approach end of 26R or the other way around? I kid.

In any case it’s laughable to me a sitting union chairman is getting flak from some individuals in his pilot group and the only thing he can do is blame it on past employees who long ago departed the fix. Gotta control the narrative somehow right? Go back and read the posts of SEP and 0X and if you put your glasses on and squint it doesn’t take much effort to see they are recent 36th street alumni or current employees, not people who “tail tucked” back to a legacy carrier. Really, that line really did make me chuckle.

I don’t care to debate about what Amerijet is doing or better yet, NOT doing as it doesn’t concern me. Any one right now who wants to leave the glories of 36th street and is able to can, and word on the street is they are in throves. If they aren’t, they either can’t or don’t want to, and good for those guys too! What a turn around from 2 years ago the industry is in for the better.

However, when it comes to wrongly accusing myself of posting with fake accounts, that I won’t let slide and I don’t have to hide behind any accounts or even this forum. Any one reading this can read and see SM self admitted to calling other airlines committee members to see why people left (which was also false, the way it was worded even shows a lack of understanding of the union structure of a larger operation) and yet still no contract for AJT? That speaks for itself. There’s also multiple conversations from internal group chats and other unofficial correspondence where your identify yourself with other fake names you’ve used on this forum to attack any one who doesn’t agree with your leadership. Happy to reference those if we have to and we can all get on the same page about who is who since you don’t have to hide behind anything.

I’d recommend spending more time on your pilot group and your tasks at hand than worrying about past engagements, trust me, it’s been nice.

 

I’m not here to make friends, and I know from years of my service to the crewmembers I have learned that you can’t make everybody happy… however I to take exception to people that attack my pilot group, especially when things looked bad at their MAJOR airline and we welcomed our brothers here with open arms. We gave you gainful employment while things went sideways with your airline, some people would be thankfully for that instead of constantly bashing your experience. I’m more that willing to address your accusations at the national level, but my god man you’re back at your major airline after surviving the horrors of Amerijet, go be happy… I’m happy for you!!

People are going to be unhappy here, that is at every airline, and as I said if you don’t like it here there are a lot of options at the moment. Find an airline that fits your lifestyle, be a professional and give your two weeks, and I wish you the best. There are a LOT of people on both sides of the isle that are working VERY hard to get the ship back afloat and on the right direction, and I think that side of the story needs to be told also. Still, even if we had a contract like FedEx there would still be people unhappy with how things are done here, and that’s to be expected everywhere. It’s real easy to jump on the negative train and complain about everything, it’s another thing to jump in and help make things better. I believe a majority of the pilots here are willing to see where this place takes us, but maybe they aren’t willing to voice that over all the loud negative people. Well I don’t care to stand on the hill and say that things are getting better here, we are on a great path for success in the future, and anybody that is willing to give the process a chance will be happy when we get where I believe we’re heading.

 

Well mudflap, I tried to contact you multiple times to sort this out like you asked, but you don’t answer. What are you afraid of discussing as professionals since you do so here?

The point blank truth is I have not said anything about your pilot group in the posts you mentioned. If you read the post you replied to again, he says he’s currently there and moving on. I’m not sure how that led you to blaming me again for whatever issues you are having. You refuse to talk now and the simple question I want to ask if why are you accusing myself of something I never did? I WAS being happy and doing my thing at my airline and you decided you needed someone to blame for the litiny of posts here of your pilots complaining. You drug me into this, but I guess you’re in the business of passing the blame onto everyone else as I’ve seen here.

As far as the charity of Amerijet “giving us jobs” no one is going to buy that. Amerijet paid me and pays its pilots now for the service of flying their aircraft the way they want them to be flown so THEY could continue to make money because they needed pilots and one was available. If amerijet was in the business of charity and handouts, or any airline for that matter, every pilot would have the contract they want all the time! That’s simply not how it works and you know that, so not much of a point.

I’ve tried to contact you multiple times to talk as professionals after you asked, and you refused. It’s telling.

 

As I said, you threatened me with taking me to professional standards, through an official union email address, so have your committee chair contact your MEC chairman and we’ll handle this through the proper channels.

 

If you had concerns about anyone or myself posting something you didn’t like on a forum, you could have addressed it directly in the first place like a professional pilot/rep would do, but you decided to cyber bully and assume through forum instead and due to those actions appropriate channels will be resourced since you are avoiding a conversation about it now when confronted directly. Best to you.

 

Guess this is a bad time to ask what to expect? My last post was deleted.