For you and anyone thinking of going to RAH, think again until a new contract is in place. Consider yourself warned.


The following are the "facts of life" working as a pilot at Republic Airways Holdings.

• Management frequently assures your efforts working at this airline are greatly appreciated and one of their founding principles is to "hire the best", however be certain that it is their goal to compensate you below what you deserve. It is unfortunate that “appreciation” does not pay mortgages, college funds, retirements, and family securities, but they do not.
• The pilot Union has voted to authorize a strike should the NMB release us. While the Union and Company are currently in negotiations seeking a new agreement, our labor dispute may escalate in the coming months.
• Despite the legal “status quo” freezing the contract while negotiations occur, the Company continues to make unilateral changes in pilot employment terms as quick fix “band aids” to cover over our severe staffing and operational reliability problems. RAH doesn’t mind treating pilots differently in pay, rewarding some with signing bonuses and ignoring others, in an effort to overcome the failed climate for pilots management has created here. This as an open admission that our compensation is simply not good enough to attract qualified applicants.
• Incredibly long upgrade time. Currently about 4 years.
• At republic, we have no cancellation pay. It is not uncommon to have quite a few flights on your schedule cancel. Flights cancel, that's life. But at RAH, you lose pay for those flights unless the company finds something else for you to do. For many of our pilots, this could constitute a 20% pay cut any given month. Cancellations strike without regard to seniority, paycheck, or previous cancellations.
• On reserve you will get just 11 days a month off. Your reserve will usually start before 8AM, so you will have to commute to your base the day before your reserve stretch begins. Your reserve assignment can end as late as 11:59PM on your last day of reserve. It is more common than not to also commute home on the day after your reserve stretch, one of your days off. This means you could be sleeping in your own bed as few as 6 nights per month.
• The reserve rules can be summarized as: "the company can do what they want to, with whomever they want to, when they want to." If you are senior on the reserve list, and want to fly—you don't necessarily get to fly. If you live in base on reserve and would prefer not to get used—you will likely fly a LOT. And reassignments and cancellations happen so frequently, that even lineholding pilots feel like “lineholder reserves.”
• You will likely be displaced out of your base at some point. You can move to your base in order to avoid commuting, but RAH has a long history of opening and closing bases and displacing the pilots not to other bases their seniority would hold, but to where the company would like the pilots to go to.
• RAH management manipulates our contract with double-talk to deny contractual rights to pilots. It has argued that the definition of "base" is the city in which your domicile is located (to avoid paying for hotels for pilots doing training in IND and STL). The same RAH management argued that the definition of "base" is the airport itself (to try and require pilots to remain at the airport at the end of a reserve assignment). The Company changes the contractual definition to suit its whims and deny pilots their contractual rights.
• RAH management has gone so far as to remove seatbelts from the 100th seat of the E-190, giving up revenue, in order to argue that the aircraft has only 99 seats just so it could deny pilots the ability to negotiate new pay rate for a new aircraft type. Giving up revenue just to deny pilots contractual rights and avoid dealing fairly with us. This is the type of management team you will be working for.

We the pilots have tried to work with Management to improve the working conditions at this airline so new hires don’t have to endure outdated and inferior pay and work rules (negotiations began in April, 2007) and aren’t subjected to a poisonous working environment. We may never convince Management of the advantages of a happy and productive pilot group, but at least a new contract will repair some of the harm to our pilot careers caused by the RAH corporate culture. Until Management agrees that the best future of this airline involves acknowledging the pilots are assets to the success of this airline through a new collective bargaining agreement and truly cooperative work culture, it is probably not in your best interest to contribute your professional skills and talents to Republic. There are plenty of other opportunities for pilots that have significantly better pay packages and an entirely different quality of work and life:





Air Wisconsin – Duty Rigs, Significantly higher FO pay than Republic, Cancellation pay, 150% open-time pay
CommutAir – Excellent commuter policy, Cancellation pay, Company paid parking pass at any airport
Compass Airlines – 20 additional E175s for American, Less than 1 year upgrade, Guaranteed interview at Delta
Corvus Airlines – Significantly higher pay than Republic, 150% open-time pay, No-cost uniforms, Home-every-night schedules
Endeavor Air - $20,000/yr bonus (which roughly equates to a $20/hr wage increase)
Envoy Air – 40 additional E175s (plus 90 options), no-interview flow-through to American Airlines, Higher FO pay than Republic, 4 commuter hotels per month
ExpressJet - Duty rigs, Cancellation pay, 150%-200% open-time pay
GoJet – 150% open-time pay, Higher FO pay than Republic, Less than 3 year upgrade
Great Lakes – Higher first year FO pay than Republic
Horizon Air – Significantly higher FO pay than Republic
Mesa Airlines – Cancellation pay, Less than 1 year upgrade, 200% for over-time
Piedmont Airlines – 20 additional E145s, Cancellation pay, 150% open-time pay, no-interview flow-through to American Airlines
PSA Airlines – Cancellation pay, Higher pay than Republic, ONLY hiring Street Captians, guarenteed interview at American Airlines
SkyWest – Higher pay than Republic
Trans States Airlines – Higher pay than Republic, Cancellation pay, 150% open-time pay, Less than 1 year upgrade

 

You're a pethatic person, sir! Telling someone not to come to RAH, while you work for the company yourself! If it's that bad, why don't you leave? Everybody is hiring!!!! You're basically telling this guy and many like him, it's better for them to go to Great Lakes than RAH!!! No wonder you're still stuck in a RJ

Are you the FO that blasts people on the message board for helping the company and how regional pay is unfair, yet flies the E190 for 36 dollars per hour? Or that captain that lives in base, makes 80k a year, talks crap about FOs that pick up open time ON THE UNION MESSAGE BOARD, yet he hands the paper work out of the window to get his on time departure

 

To all of you guys thinking about coming to RAH,

Don't believe what our pethatic Union tells you. Don't believe what RAH recruiter tells you, either.

Both parties have their own agenda and believe me, your best interest is not in it. The union wants to pressure company by staffing in order to get a new contract, hence some of the lies about life at RAH. At the same time, the company is trying to combat their staffing issues, so the recruiters will tell you things that might not be 100% true.

Truth is, RAH is a regional like others. It has its pros and cons. Would I recommend coming here in today's market? Probably not but every person's situation is unique. Do your homework guys

 

You do realize what he posted was by your own Union right? So there's no reason to blast him for it. Aside from the fact he could have posted the link instead of copy and paste... But in today's market, republic really is at the bottom...

 

RAH has no cancellation pay. New pilots need no other reason to cross RAH of the list of possible candidate airlines. Today's new hires aren't stupid. Who wants to work for an airline when there is a strong chance when your paycheck comes, after all the deductions, you might end up owing the company money!

Case closed on RAH. I wish you guys luck I really do but a new contract only serves the pilots on the property, there is nothing in it for new hires when you have to compete with flows and $20,0i00 annual bonuses.

 

I hope your sarcasm gun was just set on "ultra high". His post was a copy of our Rahcontractnow.org website.

 

Just because our own union posted this, it makes it alright? Even if some of those stuff are far from the truth?

I will not argue the fact that our company is toward the bottom! Hell, I don't think you will find a single pilot that will argue that! But I will speak up when our union, and anyone else tries to convince some new guy he's better of at Great Lakes to push their agenda forward. That's just wrong

 

Isn't upgrade time quicker at Great Lakes?

 

I know it was the copy from the union website. But copy pasting stuff, blindly, that are half ass true, is just as bad as writing it yourself

 

I don't know. Do you know the EXACT upgrade time at Great Lakes? Is upgrade time a guarantee? Do you think Great Lakes is even going to be here 2-3 years from now? I don't know, neither do you! Cause we ain't got a crystal ball.

I do know that our so called union says higher first year FO pay at Great Lakes. Hmm consider the unpaid training at lakes, signing bonus at RAH+ getting paid during training, I will bet that our first year FO makes more.

Oh, guaranteed interview at delta if you go to compass? Please, this isn't 2007-2008 anymore!

Shall we continue?