Ain’t not way some crooked flying POS 99 is going to be flown by a robot…. I’d like to see it crawl through the hatch to start with 😏

So what type of pilot applies and accepts a job here? In today's wide opening hiring market how does this company fine pilots? 🤔
3 or 4 weeks on and one off is not sustainable.

Nicely dun sir, nicely dun!

QOL varies widely according to base & run. If you get a home-every-night lifestyle with weekends off in a town where you have roots, there's not much to complain about. Not everyone wants to wear polyester shirts and commute.

Home every night: off duty at 8-9pm and back at 6am next morning

Weekends off: you’ll work Saturday mornings at a lot of bases and show between 6am and 4pm mondays. This is the only time off you’ll get except for your one week of vacation a year unless they have better staffing.

Agreed that staffing makes it better for everyone, and it's currently less than one pilot per airplane! I had a run with a 2000 showtime and was done at 0200. As I say it varies widely, just depends.

Average right now is 5-6 days per week and from 6am to 6pm if you’re on the west coast. 5-6 days per week and 6am to 9pm of you’re on the east coast.

The types of pilots that are here are either here for a pathway program “United or UPS” or they’re here because they don’t have ATP minimums and need a part 135 job before going to the airlines. There are a few “Ameri-lifers” but they are getting more rare because even they’re getting tired of the abuse.

Most recently Ameriflight management decided they’re going to re-write our “Pilots Administrative Guide” to make it more beneficial to them. As we’re not unionized we can’t do anything about that. that being said, if you are a current Ameriflight employee and would like to join the group attempting to form a union please email [email protected]. It’s illegal for them to fire employees trying to unionize. And if a union was able to get better standards of living at Ameriflight then maybe they wouldn’t have an employee shortage right now.

As for the autonomous planes. We still have airplanes without GPS and without Autopilot. Ameriflight would have to invest in a new fleet or finally upgrade their current planes in order to remotely come close to being able to fly with that level of automation. And the MX issues that AMF planes experience nearly daily because of the aging fleet types would make me wonder how long it would take until an AMF automated plane flew into someone’s house. I think their current automation goals are more along the lines of quad copters. And a fully automated B99 is decades away in my opinion. They already fly most of the fleet types as single pilot and I think you’d always need one person in the plane able to take over in an emergency. But maybe I’m just too old to think technology would advance and be trusted so much anytime soon.

As one other person already mentioned, I’m also surprised they haven’t lost more contracts yet because of their pilot shortage and inability to fill some routes right now. I think inevitably that will happen though if they keep losing pilots at the rate they are and don’t have pilots to replace. It’s easy to find qualified FOs right now. But there are 15+ Captain openings right now and growing. Anyone qualified to be a captain at AMF hired off the street is also qualified to work as an FO at the airlines and with the 10s of thousands of dollars of bonuses the airlines are offering right now and all the great benefits, AMF is probably in trouble. The pilot shortage is BACK and the last airline to realize that and adapt will be the first airline to go under.

if they are having a high turnover of pilot and they are relying on their pipeline program, why haven’t they tried to bring back their ACP they had about two to three years ago? From what I saw it was a good program that allow them to train pilot to take over the spots that would open up once petiole got the 1500 to go to the airline. I been trying to get on as a first officer off the street and so far no luck yet. I heard they were going to bring more FO on to the metro and Merlin to get them up to the Captain.

I hope that one day I get the call from the HR for a interview for the FO, would love to gain the experience of flying freight and then move over to the 99s fly as a captain.

You think you would, but you would not. It’s not worth being an FO in one of their metros to fly a poorly maintained 99 at night with no autopilot for years on end. They also have no PDP so you can’t use any of the FO time towards ATP. Go to aerial survey, go to CFI, try to get on with a corporate job or the airlines. Ameriflight is overdue for a fatality and with the way things are headed either a new pilot or maintenance related fatality will happen soon-and you don’t want to be the one in the news.

As for why it hasn’t been brought back? Money. That’s why AMF doesn’t have enough pilots, qualified maintenance people, or basic equipment in the airplanes in 2021. I mean come on, night freight in /A turboprops in 2021? You have to be joking. The current leadership is either disconnected, inept, or doesn’t actually care what makes the current company better. They’re fully focused on charter runs that make a ton of money but eat resources and time and playing catch up, all the while making grand future plans. 4-5 years ago was the sweet spot to join this company, today? No.

This is not to demean the very quality people at Ameriflight who work very hard to meet deadlines, fly safely and do things right. But there are rotten things at Ameriflight that are getting worse and they can’t overcome those as much as they try.

If you are currently at Ameriflight, join the union effort or better-leverage every single connection you have to leave and talk to a lawyer about your training contracts. This job is not worth your personal health or life.

Well, all I’m gonna say is they better not get too used to those charter flights, we’ve got people dropping like flies too. Because they are tired of being ran ragged, backside of the clock, in planes that are trying to kill them.