Piston pay is currently straight salary. The numbers on the APC profile are correct. We can request certain runs or a day off and management usually helps us out but aside from that route assignment and schedule are completely management's discretion. Usually the FNGs will spend some time doing MCK because that requires a 5 hour drive on both Saturday and Monday if you live in DEN. Aside from that the other two piston runs out of DEN are half day runs so you're back in DEN around 0930 and done for the day.

All that said, I'm doing MCK this weekend so go figure. Next week I have one day of standby and two days on our all day run out of APA. So, light week overall.

The 404s have a little more stability as they're 4 day runs, usually with a three day weekend every week. Ocassionally they'll do some flying on Mon or Sat but it seems pretty rare for them.

All of this is subject to change as the company is trying to move over to a hour + guarantee type of system. We'll see how that works.

 

Looking to see what their upgrade time looks like. Looking to make a move from my single engine part 91 job to something bigger.

 

It could be pretty short, as in 6 months, but I'd recommend looking elsewhere.

 

They have training contracts on all their airplanes. I would think real hard about signing one of those.

 

Not to mention it's flying IMC in the mountains... no autopilot... no flight director... for hours.

 

Is there a bad thing about gaining this type of experience? It's too bad more pilots don't do this before flying jets these days.

 

Says the 9K guy who either has to have an A/P or SIC to be legal for dispatch.

The reality is that it's not "hours," as I think the longest leg on the UPS system is just over an hour. But when you're coming off an 8 hour (or less) overnight, with a 4:45 AM showtime to launch at 5:45 to go hand fly for an hour to somewhere, well, sometimes staying awake is a challenge.

 

9Kbud made a very good point of more pilots need that type of hand flying experience. Stick and rudder skills for a lot of pro pilots are probably sub standard due to automation.

 

Do you guys have to load your own cargo?

 

Navajo pilots do it all except unload when returning to Denver. Metro pilots do it all at the outstation. UPS loads in DEN.