hi guys.. virgin america employee here, once flew cargo years ago now a gst in san diego.. thinking about going lateral, hopefully join you guys.. i have about 1700 flt time, 750 multi on a b1900.. would really like your input.. was offered a job with mesa 3x now.. june and october last year and again this month.. held back wanted to see what alaska has to offer.. thinking of long term here.. want to stick with the "new family" with our merger.. go no go? thanks guys..

Have you read any of this thread?

backtracked a little bit.. spoke with some of our VA pilots.. they pretty much said the same thing.. no flow thru etc.. just wanted to see what horizon pilots feel about it..

They fill riped off.. but the top 40% doesn't care there lifers...

I've been at QX just over three years (upgraded late last year), and like it here, but I can't recommend QX to anyone else unless some drastic changes happen here.

Before getting into the negatives, I will say that the people here are generally awesome to work with, our training department is excellent, and we have really good benefits, although new-hires are being forced onto a B-scale for the health insurance now.

That said, our upper management are often either malicious or incompetent (it's hard to tell which), and generally refuse to acknowledge that our starting pay is nowhere close to being competitive, so they just blame our rash of crew cancellations on those darned greedy pilots.

As a new FO, your schedule will be absolute hell on reserve, since you'll work every single day you're available (and they'll try to extend you into days off), often on 5-6 leg, 12 hour days with minimum rest overnights.

If you want to go to Alaska from QX, they've gotten better about hiring our people (we're not sitting in a pool for 11 months any more), but Alaska still makes it abundantly clear that Horizon is their unloved stepchild, with our pilots being referred to as "juvenile delinquents" or a "financial drain on Air Group" by various management types, despite the fact that we make a ton of money for them.

The "Shiny New Jets!" that QX is using to attract new hires are largely a joke, since even if you're hired into the E175, the seat lock and pilot demographics here mean that you'll either spend a decade in the right seat on the jet, or upgrade into the Q400, which will be an absolutely brutal transition for a lot of people.

If our compensation were to fall in line with what's being offered elsewhere (which would involve basically doubling first year pay at this point), this would be a decent place to start working, but there's absolutely zero indications that QX or Alaska management will do anything but fight the pilot group until the airline has basically collapsed.

Horizon sounds like the only game in town for folks willing or needing to settle for a Mesa-quality employer to get a PNW base.

SkyWest? ..

It doesn't sound like there's even a reasonable basis for comparison between Horizon and Skywest.

All of you should stop your complaining. Let's be honest, you are the red headed step children of AAG, and you all are absolutely being excessively greedy. Shut up and fly the airplane, do your job, put in your time, and move on. Watching your flying get handed off to skywest because none of you can do it is embarrassing.

Oh well since you put it that way... I've completely changed my opinion.

*Slow clap*