Can anyone share what home-basing schedules look like? I saw it’s 12 days off. Can you get more days off or is it set? Also I saw in other posts there’s rumors of more diversified flying even wide bodies?? I was interested because of possible day trips as well as home basing. But yea the pay looks really bad at least as an FO, they said 45k first year.

Swift Air - The truth
 

Alright and now for realistic info,

MIA and IWA for new hires.

Changes are here and there with management. It’s a small company, so things dont come down the pipe as they should sometimes. Communication sometimes can be lacking. Your experiences will vary. The small company mentality shows sometimes especially as we keep growing they need to think big. On the other spectrum I can call managers directly and get things fixed.

Trips are both AM or PM. This applies to all bases. 12 days off minimum. MIA days off vary from 15-12 off.

Training is fast, 45-50 days. Swift sim instructors using panam sims. Study with your partner, there’s a lot of self study. Cooperate and graduate. It’s improved a lot over the years.

Washout rate varies. Guys that can’t self study or decide to hit the bar up and not study usually end up washing out. Bad attitudes and fighting with instructors instead of listening and taking constructive criticism will get you walked out the door.


No travel bennies, we don’t have a ticketing system. You get miles from plane tickets when the company travels you. CASS, with most airlines except delta. No zed or ID90 no ticketing system to reciprocate.


Swift is what you make of it, you’re going hear so many different versions of the company whether it was good to you or not. This company requires a lot of flexibility and thinking outside of the box as you don’t have the same resources you have at a regional or LCC etc. It’s a very unique operation, you will do things you’ll never see at a regional with challenging airports, missions etc. We lack soft pay like most big airlines have, so no travel pay or pay protection for cancels etc.

Day off pay varies from 150% and above depending on their desperation.

For myself I am home based I can hold what I want and I don’t have to commute. I bid for trips that can make me money year round. Sometimes they get changed around but it is what it is, welcome to the charter world. As long as my off days are untouched I don’t care what flying I get. Summers are crazy busy and winters have their own challenges as it slows down for hockey and NCAA.

12 hard days off as of now. It’s set to 12 only right now. Management says they want to do 14on 14off in the future. MIA gets 15-12 off days.

They’re supposedly purchasing a330s not sure on timeline. Until they’re sitting on the ramp and bids are out who knows.

They do all kinds of flying. ICE NHL NCAA casino MLS MLB on occasion. Cuba charters, cargo etc. So it’s a diverse portfolio.

Day trips only exist in MIA IWA. Which is where new hires will go. Home basing at this point will probably be a bit of a while to hold unless they expand it again.

The pay as it stands is low, it’s from 2 years ago and it’s already behind. New hires for now still have the 25K bonus paid out in increments over 2 years. So first year with bonus and basic MMG you’re looking at about 60K or so. With the pay package they say they’re proposing the bonus will go away in lieu of higher pay rates.

What about the European flying? Can you bid that as a new hire?

The company hired contract pilots to fly in Europe because they didn't want to pay the pilots in property the same as last year. Contract pilots make an average of $4000 a month more than a full time pilot over there. Does that say something about management?
Schedules in Miami 4-5on 3-4off.......senior guys like the pm stuff for obvious reasons. That means you will get stuck with a schedule that will push you to a fatigue level you can't fathom. You can have only 3 straight days before 5:59am so guess what? Day 4 you are on at 6am! You're good to go and can do another couples days of 5am stuff. I heard the maintenance in Miami is really really bad, and the airplanes are pretty old!

How are they making more? Our FOs even in first year making on average 10,700 with per diem. A first year CA is making about 16,800.
Those guys make less per diem and pay the broker for their fees too. So theyre not making 4K more than our guys. They get $50 a day per diem. I think last I recall if they want to sell their days off to swift if they sit standby they don’t get paid. Even if they had more pilots go to Europe like last year they weren’t going to staff it. Can’t staff 60 pilots when you have less than 180 pilots and still have to staff 25 airplanes stateside. Basically 2.5crews per plane is what we’re at.

They wanted us to have 200 pilots by March 2019, of course that never happened. We were short 26 pilots which in turn is where upper management elected to go thru a broker and created this hiring of 26 contractors. The model was unsustainable even at 168 pilots at the time. Impossible task.


Aerotech in MIA has been a thorn in our side lately since the purchase, they’re costing us money and not getting the aircraft to speck in a maintenance base. They hired all these line mechanics who look like they just came out of A&P school. If I know how to fix and troubleshoot a problem more than the mechanic we have a problem. The level of maintenance experience is just not there. “How many MIA mechanics does it take to change a lightbulb?” “One more”

European flying is seasonal, anyone can bid it. It’s a 3-6 month tour. Runs from April (march this year) to October. So even if you started September it’ll be over by the time you come online until April of next year. This year we had a lot of new hires do OE in Europe which I thought was a bit overkill for someone new on the plane.

They’ll just put him on the ICE plane when it comes by next week.

The contractor pay is based on European flying at a 120MMG. They don’t fly in the US.

Actually, between the base pay, selling back their 2 weeks off, and getting $180/hr for everything over 80hrs, they are making considerably more than a 5th year captain