I also have an offer from Envoy. I like a lot of what's going on there but the trips appear to be uncommutable and inefficient. I'm concerned about maintaining that schedule for a long period of time. Republic may be the best fit for this Atlanta-based candidate. A lot more questions than I thought but this should be helpful to others as well.

1- do you have concerns of the companies financial situation? Short/long term?
2 - do you enjoy the comradery of your fellow pilots?
3 - do you think the pay and benefits are competitive?
4- quality of the training department
5- do they have AQP?
6- Is DCA a desirable domicile?
7- time on reserve with a DCA base?
8- can I expect DCA out of training?
9- how difficult is it to drop a trip?
10- if you need time off unexpectedly, do you call in sick, tell them you need time off or just work because they are intolerant to these types of requests?
11- are Republic trips (pairings) efficient or long days and little flying?
12- are most trips commutable with late starts and early endings?

Thank you !

 

1. You'll get a different answer from every single person here. My answer: No. We've survived Chapter 11 thus far much better than any of the nay-sayers imagined, including the fact that our pilot contract is fully intact. That's practically unprecedented. We are now a 100% E170 fleet which is huge for our longterm stability with major airline contracts.

2. Very. It's a good bunch of guys. Crews look out for each other as they should.

3. Until just a few months ago, Republic and Endeavor were unquestionably the highest paid. Now not so much. Min guarantee at our company plus bonus for the first year is $43,500. Add per diem and the occasional holiday/training pay - you're looking at around $50,000. With higher bonuses and increase in pay, some AA carriers may be the same or slightly better. I think the AA wholly owned carriers' claims of $58,000 include health insurance benefits though, where my math for Republic does not.

4. There are old legends floating around about a training department that would do anything possible to fail applicants (turn off centerline lights on low vis T/Os and other silly things like that). Those sort of things did indeed happen in the past. They do not happen today. The training department does a pretty good job preparing you. The check airmen are generally fair and helpful. It's a good experience.

5. Yes. I'm not sure about new hire training. They are working on it, but I don't think it's finalized yet. We have AQP recurrent training.

6. Plenty of people want DCA due to its being commutable. I'm CMH, so I don't have firsthand experience there.

7/8. Most junior DCA pilot was an August 2016 hire. New hires as of the August/September classes were being placed in EWR, LGA, PIT/PHL/DCA. Reserve time in DCA might be changing a lot if some of the Shuttle guys go there after they are integrated to the Republic certificate so I hesitate to tell you a number. Wild guess - around a year.

9. Always been on reserve, can't answer.

10. Sick calls are sick calls. They can't refuse you a sick day. Scheduling might not be happy to hear that you are calling sick (who would be) but they don't give you a hard time over it in my experience. On that note, our fatigue program is actually pretty good. Pilots can call in fatigued if an overnight or operational situation has left them too worn out to be safe by their own judgment. It then gets put through a process to determine if the cause was their fault, company's fault, or hotel's fault, or nobody's fault. The only time it counts as a work absence is if it's their fault. That doesn't happen often - less than 25% of the time according to the Fatigue Committee. We also just signed a Memorandum of Understanding that allows for "personal non-fault" cases in which something in your personal life that you couldn't control left you too fatigued for a trip. Can't comment on how well it works as it's fairly new.

11. As a reserve, I tend to get the trips that go completely to crap or were never good in the first place. Min day (4:12) / duty rig (paid 1 hour for every 2 hours of duty, regardless of flying) / trip rig (paid 1 hour for every 3 hours away from base) are compared and the highest of the three paid you if you get a really inefficient assignment. It helps to ease the pain. You will spend plenty of three hour airport sits though, and as a reserve will have plenty of Out of Base reserve assignments. If you're commuting, Out of Base reserve is actually better given that they pay for the hotel and you get paid for sitting in it.

12. DCA trips might be more commutable, being a hub. Outstation trips are known for early starts and late finishes. If you can't get DCA right away, go for anywhere that's a hub. The bigger the better for variety of trips.

 

Thank you for your thoughtful response! Maybe someone from DCA can jump in on reserve time. A year is a pretty long time.

1- do you come out of training with short call assigned and with seniority bid out of it or is it mixed together?

 

I agree with all of flightcaps points. Only difference is I'm a EWR line holder. I do not bid early starts/late finishes because I drive to work, but most of the people I fly with are eager to get the go home leg done in order to catch a same day flight home. I'd say most commute in the day before. That being said, these folks are mostly junior captains in base.

Life is good for a FO at RAH. The pay is alright, the trips are good, and I think movement is going to continue to increase. Our captains are getting hired all over. I know of 2 FOs that went to united recently. Personally I'm going to try for JetBlue as soon as I can, but I'm not dying to leave RAH.

 

Read several posts related to the signing bonus. Unfortunately did not see the question, " if you are hired and receive the bonus, what are the terms?"
Is there a form of contract, in terms of length of time you stay and work for the company?

Thank you in advance for any insight that anyone could provide.

 

It's prorated for 2 years. Not that it's impossible to get hired somewhere else within 2 years, but it isn't an issue for most people unless they have military time and get a call from a major within a few months.

 

Shuttle has ORD based pilots that are going to be merged into Republic and in all likeliness choose to stay in ORD, right? So Chicago would probably be tough for a newhire to attain or get any movement up the seniority list in that base, right? Thx. I really like the feel of Republic, but I just can't decide between airlines (envoy/republic/skywest) with ord as a base!

 

If you're wanting to guarantee ORD as new hire, Skywest is a better option than RAH in that regard. It tends to be the most junior base for them. Republic FOs need a few months (3-5 at the moment) to get ORD.

 

Things seem to be moving in the right direction as far as our united plane orders. Company email hints the hurdles towards the deal are behind us. Makes an EWR FO happy.

 

Yep-I think so, too.