I am writing for the first time, so I ask you guys to take it easy on me, so here we go. I am former Eastern pilot even though we were not perfect the CP, DO and AB along with the original CEO understood that pilots were a very important part of the success of Eastern Airlines. The pay and the benefits we got did not lead to the current financial situation for Eastern and the merger with Swift.

Example we got 70 hour guarantee, a trip rig of 1 hour of pay 5.5 TAFB for overnights, a minimum of 4 hour pay for turns, 150% for days off minimum of 4 hours, 12 hard days off a month, 125% premium pay over 85 hours, 7 hours of PTO credit earned every month and the company would only charge 5 hours per day when taken ( this is equal to about 16 days off a year) the PTO could also be used for vacation, 50% credit towards guarantee when deadheading or commercialing minimum of 4 hours per day, we did not have home basing but scheduling would work with the out of town pilots, published lines every month and only the reserve lines would have short call and a maximum of 6 days a month, no short call reserve after or before a schedule day off and if the company needed to change the reserve status to a short call it would begin 10 hours after midnight at the end of the schedule day off, and lastly pilots were allow to swaps trips and days off. The company also encourage to have a group of pilots to bring foward any issues and to try to resolve them quickly.

Again the work rule I posted here did not lead to the financial issues at Eastern. Management was not perfect either, we had issue but every company does. The issue in my opinion began with the first CEO then his replacement who was the CFO and his chief of staff also our sales guy MH who could not sell sunscreen in Miami. They did not understand the charter airline industry and the business plan to move into schedule ooerations was flawed and they lied to all of the pilots and employees. When the merger conversation began with Swift, Eastern CEO told the CP, DO, AB and the director of training that Swift would keep the same pay and that they would bring the swift pilot pay up to equal Eastern and the company would work to intergrade seniority list obviously that was all a lie. The COO Boris told all of the pilots In a meeting in June that we could apply and we would go to the bottom of the list if we got hired. In January Eastern had about 60 pilots as of june they had about 16 pilots left, the CP resigned in June they gave a reason he wanted to spend more time with the family, but i suspect it had to do with the Cuba operations (havana air specifically and their managemnt team) and the swift deal. Most of all the pilots that have left have been hired by Atlas, Spirit or Norweigan.

In my opinion the CP and DO along with AB worked very hard to make Eastern a success.

Lastly the issue with Swift is that they are now getting into the 737-800 business and that plan is flawed. They gave us a presentation and it is smoke and mirrors. First of all swift only has very old 737 which are either paid off or low lease payments. The 737-800 They are getting will cost them about 200k a month each in leases. That additional cost equals to about a 1 million dollars a month plus MX. reserve, the additional pay for pilots, FA, dispatchers, and support staff will increase fix cost dramayically not including constant training. There plan is to fly vacation packages, sport teams and Cuba. Which means if that is only their plan they will not make it, this plan will start to fall apart in about 2 years when it might be to late to find another job. Miami Air and Extra Airways are a much better option if you are looking to fly charters. Miami Air has ETOPS, DOD and long term customers. Extra just got North Atlantic qualified and I am sure their next step is DOD and ETOPS plus they have a good portion of Miami Air sales team working for them now.

I only have met a few Swift pilot and they all were very professional. I urge them to demand at least the same benefit package Eastern was giving their pilots.
Also please check out the history of the CEO Cindy and COO Boris they are very shady.

A really smart pilot told me once when pilots united we bargain when we are divided we beg.

Good luck to all.

 

Super 1st post as far as I'm concerned.

Never understood brand resurrecting. No shortage of grief when EAL slipped into history, who needs that reminder on tray table napkins again? Kind of like the movie about the best friend dog the kid lost, dug up and put back together. Not the same dog.

 

The company has come a long way. When I started there weren't even pay raises you were at your pay rate forever. In a year there's been 2 pay raises and even profit sharing. Granted the amounts of raises are not great but it's a start. Trying to get a small company to think big is difficult especially when they're on this aggressive timeline.

Not sure what the terms are on those 2 eastern -800 leases but I'm sure there's something behind it backing it or a deal made somewhere or they probably wouldn't have made such a deal and got older NGs from Europe instead.. The other NG coming not sure of it's source nor financial backing. Usually they target low cost older equipment thus the classic collection which has served well.

It's not a perfect place by any means and man does it need work. The effort of the pilots is definitely to make it better than eastern in anyway possible.

Not sure what greater future swift will have but we definitely would love to take those good guys from eastern willing to come over for the opportunity.

 

Who is your current CP/DO? Where do we send our resumes besides [email protected]? Thanks in advance.

 

Send it to [email protected], please save the file as first initial of your first name then your complete last name (i.e. John Smith, JSmith resume)

 

Mexipilot, what makes a good company to work for is the management team. What makes it an enjoyable company to go to work for is the co workers. I am sure swift has a great group of people to work with, we had the same group of hard working dedicated employee working at Eastern and if any of them decide to join Swift they will bring the same hard working and dedicated attitude to swift.

When the swift deal started up I looked into the management team at swift and their past history and I kept an open mind doing my research. What I found actually scare me Mr. Conry and Mr. Boris have a history of either failures or legal litigation against them at every airline they manage ( look it up in google).

In the meeting we had with Mr. Boris he admitted that they have a very limited infasinfrastructural from maintenance to operations. We had the same issue at Eastern in the beginning which led to a lot of issues in the being which probably contributed to the down fall. Swift management will cut to many corners which will lead to a lot of issues. If you do not hire the adequate number of employees it will eventually lead to costly mistakes in the operations. At Eastern we had over 200 employees for 6 airplanes and we were short on support staff in all departments. Swift has 12 airplanes and only about 150 employees according to Mr. Boris this seems like a serious issue.

I wish all of the pilots and employees at swift best of luck. The pilots should be earning adequate compensation for the type of equipment they fly. The question I ask the swift pilot should your pay and benefits be any less than Miami Air, Eastern, Suncountry or Xtra. Just a though.

 

All airline CEOs are scary, they open, close airlines and start another! Swift is no novice to this nor is eastern and the other miami mafia airlines on 36th st. Only thing I see positive about swift is not having their eggs in one basket.

I can only hope they grow to something good and positive. In the mean time while something better comes along I'll try and make the positive of this place while able. Many hard working people trying to make this place better hopefully management can acknowledge those efforts

 

Shirtfild, I think we can safely assume that anyone who is even remotely interested in flying for Swift has googled the management.
You mentioned a few things about Eastern, that the pay etc was superior to Swift, that the previous management were much better, that the sales department didn't know what they were doing, all this may be true but Eastern is no more and Swift is growing.
Management at Swift may have a chequered past but they seem to know what they are doing, the owners have a plan and the pay is increasing, I don't think it will get to Eastern pay but it is above Miami Air and Xtra for the first 5 years.
Swift has big plans, people are being hired into required positions, planes are being added to the fleet to fly additional contracts and not as some vanity project, the plan is for 21 airplanes in the near future and you can bet the business is there, they wouldn't get them if they didn't think they'd make money.
Now, is Swift perfect? No, not by a long stretch but they are still in business, they are growing, compensation and QOL are improving and as I have said previously, a lot of guys maybe better off going to a regional, but if you want to fly 737s and upgrade fast Swift is probably the place to go at the moment.

 

Hopefully will be joining soon.

Now, I am curious what this is going to mean for Miami Air and Xtra.

Good times finally for this level of the industry.

 

What will happen to the outstanding Eastern MRJ order?

http://www.flythemrj.com/news/date/news_140926.html

Cancelled?