TheNotoriousPIC

I have an interview with this company as well. How have you found the hiring process to be so far? What did your initial interviews consist of? And if I may ask, what ratings and flight experience did you have prior to applying with them?

arthur106

I resigned after a week. Here is an account of my experience, good and bad.

BAD: (Point 2 is why I resigned)

1.) On my second day of real flying after completing the checkout flights, I had a partial engine failure. I told a customer to transition from an ascent into a decent. The customer got a little too excited and we ended up pulling ~0 G's for about a second--no more. The engine sputtered out almost completely and for a second or two things got pretty quiet. The power slowly came back and the engine was vibrating quite a bit. It didn't come back completely, we were only able to maintain 1950-2000 rpm in level flight. I did all my checks (carb heat, primer, ignition, etc.) and couldn't find the cause. We turning back towards the airport and I discovered that leaning the mixture resulted in immediate rpm increase. It was odd, as I've never had such a sensitive mixture control nob. Pulling it out just a hair resulted in a ~200 rpm increase and pulling it a hair further killed the engine. We were able to make it back to the field without incident. After landing and shutting down the engine, we did a runup and achieved 2200 static rpm ("normal" for this plane). The "boss" (will go unnamed) supposedly looked at it and said there's nothing wrong with it. I didn't make a fuss of this, as I'm really no expert, but as a mechanical engineer something about this doesn't sound "fine".

2.) As soon as I arrived, management changed the way planes were assigned. Rather than a pilot "owning" a plane for a day, we rotated planes. You'd be lucky to fly the same one twice in one day. This brought up the concern of keeping track of fuel. Before, ground crews would fill it to tabs, the pilot would (should) verify this, and then they can keep track of air time and have a pretty good idea of how much fuel is left. With the new system, we were expected to trust ground personnel to keep track of fuel. There were two main points brought up about this. 1.) You're blindly trusting the ground personnel actually filled up the tanks and that the pilot(s) before you verified this. It's not unimaginable for this to go wrong. 2.) You're also counting on ground personnel to keep track of air time properly. In my short time there, they already screwed this up once. They told me there wasn't enough fuel left for a 23 minute flight when I still had ~20 gallons.

At a monthly pilot meeting, another pilot brought this up when the boss asked us if we had anything to bring up. All he asked is that we keep fuel sticks in the plane so that we can have a better way to gauge how much fuel is left. The boss somehow took offense to this, and crucified this pilot in front of everyone. The tirade lasted about 5 minutes, so I can't recall everything, but here are some excerpts: "You're a low-time 400 hour pilot and I have XXXX hours. I'm not going to stoop down to your level, you'll have to come up to mine!", "We do so much for you guys, you should just trust the system we have in place, it works." Now, keep in mind that we all had the same concern, but everyone else kept their mouths shut because they were cowards. I spoke up but was able to avoid most of the boss's wrath.

The next evening, me and this other guy are at dinner and he told me that the boss had requested to see him the next morning. He said that he thought he was going to bee terminated. I told him that there's no way he could be fired for that--all he did was respectfully make a suggestion based on a legitimate safety concern at the proper place and time. Keep in mind that this guy didn't really have a history of causing trouble. The only thing I was able to gather by talking to other pilots was that he once refused to fly because he wasn't comfortable with the weather (see below). I decided that I he was going to get fired for this "offense", then I'd resign.

The next morning, he calls me to tell me that he was terminated "for not knowing the fuel burn of a pa-28-140". He apparently told the boss "I know the fuel burn, it's 6-8 gph", at which point the boss said, "you can keep your job if you keep your mouth shut and don't start any trouble". This made it abundantly clear in my mind that I didn't want to work here. When I went to resign, the boss threatened me saying this would me on my PRIA record for 5 years.

GOOD:

Honestly, if it weren't for this one guy, I'd love the company. A lot of the employees are family and it's a tight-knit community. For all the complaints I've made above, the maintenance really isn't all that bad. The boss had been making changes recently specifically to ensure the planes have more hangar time for MX without affecting flight schedules. He's a very compitent, smart guy but the problem was that he as an arrogant a**hole would wasn't willing to listen to the guys actually flying the planes everyday. The story above also makes me question his integrity.
The company will also pay for half of your scuba certification. The waters around Saipan and Tinian are truly world class.
You'll start out doing discover flights for tourists which is amazing. A lot of them are cute girls in their 20's from China. (The Chinese don't really don't have GA, so it's super cool to them). Anyway, as a young guy wearing a pilot uniform and taking them on tour flights, they were ALL OVER ME. I've already got a significant other, but if you're a young, single guy, you can really have a blast over there!

arthur106

This was a picture taken from a friend's facebook page, so the credibility may not be 100%, but based on what I've seen, I absolutely believe it.

arthur106

Does anyone know of anywhere hiring ~300 hour pilots who have integrity and enough courage to stand up agianst this *******??? (because other than those two qualities, I can't think of anything to set me apart from the crowd)

I'm sure my buddy will be looking for a job, too. I think he's close to 500 hours.

JohnBurke

You quit because you didnt like the boss. At 300 hours without sufficient experience to qualify for 135, you quit. Your "partial power failure" reads like textbook pilot error with improper leaning. If you seek other work, I wouldnt be in too big a hurry to tell a prospective employer this story to show your "integrity."

TiredSoul

Arthur, let me be frank.
You shot yourself in the foot in this one.
None of your arguments hold water.
Your 'partial engine failure' was completely pilot induced by letting a non-certificated passenger entrusted to your skills manipulate the controls in such a way that it created a problem.
If this would have ended in an off airport landing and I was FAA I'd be going after your ticket full force.
Oil got into places where it shouldn't have been and that's why it ran like sh*t.
Then the fuel thing ( roll eyes).
Seriously go take a look at yourself.
I'd go back and apologize and ask for my job back is what I'd do.

WesternSkies

I worked for a guy like that for a while so I appreciate you voting with your feet.

dera

Those pics are taken at Seoul-Incheon. Not sure what the relevance is.

arthur106

I can't tell, and as I mentioned, it came off a Facebook page and isn't necessarily a reliable source. The relevance is that they encouraged us to break part 91 wx minimums left and right.. This isn't just me saying this, as I was warned of this by fellow forum members before going over there. Unfortunately, I had gone inactive on the forum for a while and didn't see the PM's till after I got back.

arthur106

Ok, "partial engine failure" sounds a bit ridiculous when I read it myself. Perhaps "partial power loss" sounds a bit better? Trusting a "non-certificated passenger" to manipulate the controls was kind of my job... That's what the discovery flights were all about.

Look, we weren't out there hotdoging or trying to emulate Top Gun, I've had stalls that broke as aggressively than when this guy pushed forward on the yoke and have never had this happen. I appreciate your input, perhaps it could have simply been oil getting in the wrong place--I doubt it based on the symptoms (I have my own theory based on research...and being a mechanical engineer...), but I'm not here to argue about that (I'm sure I'll just get roasted anyway, pm me if you're curious). I didn't cause a huge fuss about the issue or pretend to be an expert--I consulted more experienced pilots before grounding the plane or otherwise making a big deal about it. To be clear, I'm not trying to paint a picture that there's a catastrophic issue with the plane, the point to take away was the dismissive attitude, especially considering another pilot had reported similar symptoms the day before. And this isn't the reason I quit, it's just supporting evidence to what I viewed as an unsafe culture.

The fuel thing? It's not about the fuel thing. It's about the fact that you can't voice a reasonable concern without being fired simply because the boss takes offense to it. I'd have been fine if he simply explained that fuel sticks aren't necessary and left it at that (I mean, really, if you can see fuel in your tanks you've got enough to make a 23 minute flight...). Maybe I've got unreasonable expectations coming from an engineering background and working for companies that relentlessly pursue the best safety culture possible, but I'd think a reasonable person would agree that this is pretty bad...

Believe me, I've had real pricks for bosses before. I actually liked this guy 95% of the time. I quit because you're not allowed to voice concerns without the fear of being fired. What happens if another pilot experiences a problem with one of the airplanes? Will he keep his mouth shut because he's afraid of repercussions if he's wrong?

And regarding your opinion that it was due to improper leaning.. it very well could have been--I'm not going to argue over something that I have no proof over, but having flown mostly flying club planes (lots of novice pilots who don't lean properly) I've dealt with fouled spark plugs A LOT, and I'm fairly confident this wasn't it. Keep in mind another pilot had a similar issue the day before. Perhaps I'm wrong on this one; I'm always willing to admit it, and this is why I really didn't make a big deal of it while I was there. I'm not saying there's something catastrophically wrong with the plane, my point in bringing up the story is to bring up the dismissive attitude.

I can see how this doesn't read very well, but the "integrity" remark was just a lighthearted way of pointing out that I really don't have any real qualifications to set me apart from the crowd (hence the awkward smiley face). I'm not trying to give myself a pat on the back here...