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Alpine Air Hiring

Old 10-06-2021, 04:40 PM
  #41  
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Originally Posted by Alpine Pilot View Post
Absolutely. Weather happens, so if it’s questionable at the destination just talk with UPS or FedEx and tell them what the closest alternatives that are forecasted to work might be, and ask them which alternate they would prefer.

Hailey, Idaho (KSUN) is a good example. It gets socked in all the time in the winter. It’s in the bottom of a steep valley and the approach only lets you get down to about 900 feet. If that flight can’t get in then UPS usually prefers to have it divert to Jerome followed by Twin Falls, depending on what the weather allows. If the weather is currently barely legal, but it’s forcast to clear up in a hour and a half, then they’ll let you wait on the ramp for better conditions at the destination before you depart. That’s better than flying up there, ending up in a hold, and then diverting to Twin Falls where it’s an extra 2 hour round trip for the drivers as the weather now begins to break at SUN.

In general, it’s simply expected that you’ll make good PIC decisions and try to reach the original destination if possible, and in a safe manner. If you can’t get in we already have a few prefered alternates, and if things really go sideways I’ve simply returned to SLC with the cargo still in the plane because even the alternates started looking bad. In that case I got fuel, waited a couple hours for weather to get better at a suitable airport, and then launched again.
That’s good to hear! Sounds like a good company to work for. Single pilot IFR sounds like a lot of fun!
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Old 10-09-2021, 07:35 AM
  #42  
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Originally Posted by Alpine Pilot View Post
Absolutely. Weather happens, so if it’s questionable at the destination just talk with UPS or FedEx and tell them what the closest alternatives that are forecasted to work might be, and ask them which alternate they would prefer.

Hailey, Idaho (KSUN) is a good example. It gets socked in all the time in the winter. It’s in the bottom of a steep valley and the approach only lets you get down to about 900 feet. If that flight can’t get in then UPS usually prefers to have it divert to Jerome followed by Twin Falls, depending on what the weather allows. If the weather is currently barely legal, but it’s forcast to clear up in a hour and a half, then they’ll let you wait on the ramp for better conditions at the destination before you depart. That’s better than flying up there, ending up in a hold, and then diverting to Twin Falls where it’s an extra 2 hour round trip for the drivers as the weather now begins to break at SUN.

In general, it’s simply expected that you’ll make good PIC decisions and try to reach the original destination if possible, and in a safe manner. If you can’t get in we already have a few prefered alternates, and if things really go sideways I’ve simply returned to SLC with the cargo still in the plane because even the alternates started looking bad. In that case I got fuel, waited a couple hours for weather to get better at a suitable airport, and then launched again.
Also, does the company allow the pilots to do some flight instruction during down time/off days?
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Old 10-10-2021, 11:16 AM
  #43  
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Originally Posted by Cleared4appch View Post
Also, does the company allow the pilots to do some flight instruction during down time/off days?
As long as it doesn't interfere with your line schedule it's fine, but pilots that do something like that usually work as part-time employees. There's a couple pilots that are part-timers because they also have other flying gigs like instructing, seasonal fire work, or flying for a small corporate operation. The biggest difference between full-time line pilots and part-time is you're only paid a day rate for the days you actually fly, you don't get the weekly 5 day pay guarantee.
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Old 10-12-2021, 01:42 PM
  #44  
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I've been asked via PM if we have a vaccine mandate and here is my reply, in case other pilots would like to know.

We have no vaccine requirements at this time, and as far as I know we have no intention to start one. We are based in Montana, where such a requirement would currently be illegal. Basically, Montana House Bill 702 passed and signed in August, says requiring any vaccine as a condition for employment is “discrimination” and would be a violation of the state’s human rights laws.

Again, I am not an official company spokesman. I do not make policy at Alpine. These are simply the facts as I currently understand them. I am also not taking sides in the vaccine debate, please do not discuss it here unless you have an Alpine specific question.
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Old 10-12-2021, 02:11 PM
  #45  
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And here's something that's more fun. Now that I have enough posts on this forum I can attach pictures. Here's a few that show the facilities of our 1900 training program at Air Training Support (ATS) in Centennial, Colorado.





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Old 10-12-2021, 02:12 PM
  #46  
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And here's the classroom, lobby, and break room.





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Old 10-12-2021, 08:14 PM
  #47  
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Originally Posted by Alpine Pilot View Post
As long as it doesn't interfere with your line schedule it's fine, but pilots that do something like that usually work as part-time employees. There's a couple pilots that are part-timers because they also have other flying gigs like instructing, seasonal fire work, or flying for a small corporate operation. The biggest difference between full-time line pilots and part-time is you're only paid a day rate for the days you actually fly, you don't get the weekly 5 day pay guarantee.
Ok thanks for clarifying that!
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Old 10-15-2021, 06:22 AM
  #48  
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It's an okay company to work for. Just don't think it is leaps and bounds different than Ameriflight.

I kind of laughed when I heard the guy mention "reserve pilots." If there is a reserve pilot that day, he will likely be the one guy who is a 20 year Alpine lifer and just does reserve 5 days a week. What I'm trying to say is the company does not hire enough pilots to maintain quality of life.

The chief pilot is a hands off chief pilot who doesn't stand up to the Mormon owner of the company. The chief pilot delegates full control of the base to the assistant chief pilots with limited oversight. If the assistant chief pilot at your base sucks, than you will likely get annoyed overtime with your crappy schedule.

It takes forever to get hired on at this company, because the chief pilot is so afraid to pull the trigger on a new candidate. (Again related to fear of owner) He failed to hire a 21 year old from Alaska with 600 hours of SIC 1900 time. You have to call and talk to the chief pilot on the phone to have any chance of being hired 9-12 months down the road.

One of my main complaints with the company was there was very little appreciation for having a perfect attendance schedule. If you work for them, don't be afraid to take a sick day once a month. That is what I would have done had I known about this beforehand.

The chief pilot bothered me about my black new balance tennis shoes once a month. Again, your attendance record will not be valued by the chief pilot. Call in sick once a month and you will have a better quality of life.

If you delay because of weather, expect to get a call from the chief pilot in 30 mins asking you about your decision. One day Ameriflight cancelled all of their flights do to weather. I decided to delay and definitely felt pressured by the chief pilot to get a move on. I delayed for 5-6 hours and still managed to find a microburst.

Alpine wants to be better/bigger than Ameriflight, but like many corporate races, in many ways I felt it was a race to the bottom. Your quality of life will be better at an Alpine base that does not have Ameriflight there too. At the bases they share, both Alpine and Ameriflight are probably trying to outbid each other monthly to UPS to get more routes. That is why the quality of life sucks so much at those bases.

The maintenance at the company was very good. Far better than Ameriflight.
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Old 10-15-2021, 05:58 PM
  #49  
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Originally Posted by NatGeo View Post
It's an okay company to work for. Just don't think it is leaps and bounds different than Ameriflight.

I kind of laughed when I heard the guy mention "reserve pilots." If there is a reserve pilot that day, he will likely be the one guy who is a 20 year Alpine lifer and just does reserve 5 days a week. What I'm trying to say is the company does not hire enough pilots to maintain quality of life.

The chief pilot is a hands off chief pilot who doesn't stand up to the Mormon owner of the company. The chief pilot delegates full control of the base to the assistant chief pilots with limited oversight. If the assistant chief pilot at your base sucks, than you will likely get annoyed overtime with your crappy schedule.

It takes forever to get hired on at this company, because the chief pilot is so afraid to pull the trigger on a new candidate. (Again related to fear of owner) He failed to hire a 21 year old from Alaska with 600 hours of SIC 1900 time. You have to call and talk to the chief pilot on the phone to have any chance of being hired 9-12 months down the road.

One of my main complaints with the company was there was very little appreciation for having a perfect attendance schedule. If you work for them, don't be afraid to take a sick day once a month. That is what I would have done had I known about this beforehand.

The chief pilot bothered me about my black new balance tennis shoes once a month. Again, your attendance record will not be valued by the chief pilot. Call in sick once a month and you will have a better quality of life.

If you delay because of weather, expect to get a call from the chief pilot in 30 mins asking you about your decision. One day Ameriflight cancelled all of their flights do to weather. I decided to delay and definitely felt pressured by the chief pilot to get a move on. I delayed for 5-6 hours and still managed to find a microburst.

Alpine wants to be better/bigger than Ameriflight, but like many corporate races, in many ways I felt it was a race to the bottom. Your quality of life will be better at an Alpine base that does not have Ameriflight there too. At the bases they share, both Alpine and Ameriflight are probably trying to outbid each other monthly to UPS to get more routes. That is why the quality of life sucks so much at those bases.

The maintenance at the company was very good. Far better than Ameriflight.
When the chief pilot would call, was he inquiring about your decision so that he’s in the loop, and understands your decision for delaying, or was he pressuring you? There is a difference.
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Old 10-22-2021, 07:21 PM
  #50  
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I’m simply going to say what my experience has been compared with what NatGeo wrote. Remember that we’re different people, with different experiences, at different points in the timeline of the company. I can only share how it's been for me. Not everybody is going to have a great experience here, I fully agree with that. As a veteran I’m a trained professional when it comes to b!tch!ng about the chain of command, and I’ve used that skill on occasion at Alpine when I didn’t understand some decisions. However, I really do like working here and I’m still having fun after almost 3 years or I simply would have moved on. I just have an outlook that most jobs will become what you make of them, so I try to make this a good one.

Originally Posted by NatGeo View Post
It's an okay company to work for. Just don't think it is leaps and bounds different than Ameriflight.

I kind of laughed when I heard the guy mention "reserve pilots." If there is a reserve pilot that day, he will likely be the one guy who is a 20 year Alpine lifer and just does reserve 5 days a week. What I'm trying to say is the company does not hire enough pilots to maintain quality of life.
I've been here 3 years and I've had a lot of reserve days across all of them. As a junior 99 pilot I had plenty of reserve days where I either didn’t launch and went home, or did a quick out and back. It was the same even when I was a junior 1900 pilot after I got past 100 hrs of PIC time. Your results may vary, as this is pretty dependent on the staffing levels at the the base you fly at and how your assistant chief handles the scheduling. Also, in my time here I've never met a 20 year Alpine lifer that rides reserve 5 days a week. Perhaps he finally retired.

Originally Posted by NatGeo View Post
The chief pilot is a hands off chief pilot who doesn't stand up to the Mormon owner of the company. The chief pilot delegates full control of the base to the assistant chief pilots with limited oversight. If the assistant chief pilot at your base sucks, than you will likely get annoyed overtime with your crappy schedule.
Honestly, I like our Chief. Both the previous one Chuck, and the current one Cole. I've had almost nothing but positive experiences both of them, but again that's only my experience. In talking to line pilots across all of the bases about the pros and cons of working here, the Chief and Assistant Chiefs are usually pretty high on the Pro list and not very often on the Con side.

Also, I never knew the owner was Mormon. It’s never come up around me nor has it been thrown in my face in any way. I really don’t care what religion he is because I don’t think it matters.

Originally Posted by NatGeo View Post
It takes forever to get hired on at this company, because the chief pilot is so afraid to pull the trigger on a new candidate. (Again related to fear of owner) He failed to hire a 21 year old from Alaska with 600 hours of SIC 1900 time. You have to call and talk to the chief pilot on the phone to have any chance of being hired 9-12 months down the road.
I didn’t know anything about Alpine when I applied. I called a phone number on a listing and asked to talk to a pilot because I had some questions about how the flight operations worked. The guy on the other end said something like “I’m a pilot here, ask away” so I asked questions about what Alpine does, what the schedule was like, where they fly, etc. Then I found out the guy I was chatting with was the Chief and he asked me to email my resume. I was offered a job a few days later.

The last resume I received via PM here on APC had solid qualifications so I passed it up the chain, and he also had a job offer within a few days. Unfortunately he didn’t take it because he couldn’t get here from Alaska fast enough before we stop training for peak. So if we need pilots they usually move pretty quickly, or if you just catch them at the right time they move quickly, but if they’re busy you might get missed. I agree this is one of the negatives. If the senior staff is busy we don’t have a recruiting person or team that can talk to all of the interested pilots, not that I’m aware of anyway, and we probably need to change that if we plan to grow much further.

Originally Posted by NatGeo View Post
One of my main complaints with the company was there was very little appreciation for having a perfect attendance schedule. If you work for them, don't be afraid to take a sick day once a month. That is what I would have done had I known about this beforehand.

The chief pilot bothered me about my black new balance tennis shoes once a month. Again, your attendance record will not be valued by the chief pilot. Call in sick once a month and you will have a better quality of life.
Sometimes the schedule changes a lot, I know it can at SLC, and sometimes that can suck. Other times it's not that bad. If I have a vacation scheduled and approved I’ve never had a problem keeping it. If I’ve given advance notice I need certain days off for appointments at the VA or something, I’ve pretty much never had a problem with that. But when I look at the schedule and make a few plans based on what it shows for the next 3 weeks, and then it gets scrambled and I have to change plans, I can get annoyed. I didn’t lose vacation days, or requested days off, but my remaining days on vs days off might have changed during the schedule revision and now I need to change some of those plans I just made. It happens, but I can usually work things out in the end.

I’ve also never needed to call in sick, unless of course I was actually sick. I can usually just swap days off with other pilots, but that’s because I get along with most of them. I can also simply request a couple specific days off a few weeks in advance before the next schedule comes out. It doesn’t count against my vacation time if I just need a specific Wednesday off next month to go to an appointment or something because my assistant Chief will work around it if I’ve given him advance notice.

New Balance tennis shoes have never been a part of the uniform as far as I know, but they aren’t terribly strict on uniforms here anyway. That would have been a huge deal with some of my previous employers who would have done more than bother me. In the middle of winter we wear whatever we need to keep warm on the ramp with the uniform Polo and black pants somewhere underneath. In cold weather I wear fleece lined black pants under fleece lined snow pants with black Columbia winter boots that have ice treads. I also wear a big black bomber style jacket, over a light down jacket, over my polo and I put a warm hat on my head. In good weather the standard is black or grey company polo, black slacks, and black leather shoes. You can also wear a company ball cap if you want. And a reflective vest is required on the ramp.

Originally Posted by NatGeo View Post
If you delay because of weather, expect to get a call from the chief pilot in 30 mins asking you about your decision. One day Ameriflight cancelled all of their flights do to weather. I decided to delay and definitely felt pressured by the chief pilot to get a move on. I delayed for 5-6 hours and still managed to find a microburst.
I’ve never gotten one of those calls. If the weather is bad I tell UPS ops what their options are as far as where I can get in and at what time, and I also tell the assistant chief that runs my base what’s going on. If it’s legal to fly then I fly, if it’s not legal then I don’t fly. If I really don’t like something and I want to delay, but it’s technically legal weather, I talk to my assistant chief about what I’m uncomfortable with and discuss what I’m planning to do. I’ve never been scolded if I keep everybody in the loop.

Originally Posted by NatGeo View Post
Alpine wants to be better/bigger than Ameriflight, but like many corporate races, in many ways I felt it was a race to the bottom. Your quality of life will be better at an Alpine base that does not have Ameriflight there too. At the bases they share, both Alpine and Ameriflight are probably trying to outbid each other monthly to UPS to get more routes. That is why the quality of life sucks so much at those bases.
Pretty sure UPS doesn’t bid these big contracts out monthly, or even annually, but I don’t handle that stuff so maybe I’m wrong. Also, the SLC base was shared with Ameriflight for years up until a couple weeks ago and our quality of life was pretty damn good and we had low attrition, so I guess I just don’t agree with this idea.

Originally Posted by NatGeo View Post
The maintenance at the company was very good. Far better than Ameriflight.
Oh yeah, I think we have a great maintenance team.
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