There was a blurb on the Alaska Emp. website today in the form of a q & A that mentioned two q400's in ANC during the 4th quarter of 2013...

Horizon still exists as a separate (but wholly-owned) entity, it's the brand that has been done away with. Their flights are sold as Alaska (operated by Horizon Air) and their paint scheme says ALASKAHORIZON.

So far as 8-year upgrades...my 9-year FO friends who can't even hold weekends off in Portland wish it were so. Most junior CA is 2001 right now.

No flow to AS. They have a history of hiring some Horizon folks, but don't even come close to betting on that.

It's still Horizon. 11-12 year upgrades at this point.

At a recent company meeting, the growth idea was thrown around a few times. The answer is always the same from upper management: "Once we reach our 10% profit margin, we'll be a position to consider growth."

So in short, "no."

For new applicants, there is no real incentive to consider working at Horizon anymore. It used to be the guarantee that you'd be in either Portland or Seattle, so for a native PNW resident that was a decent draw. But with the prospect of being stuck in Medford or Spokane until further notice, the MUCH better option for people desiring to live in either SEA or PDX is to go to Skywest. Last guy I talked to was on the Brasilia in PDX, and said it wouldn't take long to be able to hold that... Oh, and at Skywest you'll likely have more take-home pay as well. The hourly rate isn't everything...

We lost around 14 people last bid and the bean counters say we are still overstaffed by 10. If you want pdx or sea go to sky west you will upgrade there before you will hold reserve in those Two bases at horizon.

Pay at horizon will be your hourly times 800-900 per year plus per diem and a couple thousand a year in profit sharing. There is no soft time in our joke of a contract. To top it off most of us are excited to be able to credit 5hrs a day which doesn't lead to very many days off. Did I mention the loooooong upgrade and the two year training contract.....

Horizon used to be a great place. Now it's a place where if you have no ambition to move to a major and you either currently live or want to live in the PNW, then QX is the place for you. Obviously, Medford is the displacement base, so by default the junior base. Schedules are not very good. When I was there, a normal four day trip would credit about 19.5-20.5 hrs. of credit with a 92 hour monthly guarantee for line holders. Now the MG is 80.5 hours, but my friends there are not realizing many more days off if any.

Yes the hourly pay is pretty good, but when you can only credit 86-93 hours a bid (every five weeks), that doesn't really add up to much money. The airline that I'm currently at, an average four day trip is around 21-22 hours and only ten legs in four days. Trips at QX were less credit and I averaged 19 legs in four days. Trips at the other bases are not really commutable from what my friends are telling me.

Finally, if you do plan to move on to another carrier like a major, upgrade IS almost 12 yrs. Most junior captain is 01/2001 DOH. I have friends that were Q200 Captains, and have not been retrograded yet. Think long and hard about what you want from your career before going to any regional. If you want to eventually fly at a major, go to a regional where you can upgrade relatively quick and get your TPIC and get out.

Actually, I have a real question about Horizon's scheduling. I understand that after the monthly awards are published, there is a period of time -3 days or something like that- where crew members can pickup/drop/swap or trip trade with other crew members with few restrictions.....or something like that?

Now, I may be way off and I've only heard this information third or even tenth-hand, but if one of your Horizon guys or gals has the time, could you tell more about this system, if it exists and how it works?

This system does exist. It's called SAP. There's SAP 1, and SAP 2. The first one is a given period of time to submit requests, after which they are awarded in seniority order. Then in SAP 2, it's first-come first-served.

Here's the catch. You have to be a line holder to participate in SAP at all. So maybe 2-4 years down the road you can use SAP to try to fix your BS non-commutable schedule in a domicile you didn't want.

Good times...

The system is pretty cool for line holders. The union builds our trips/lines and they hold ~three percent of the trips back. Those trips and any trips dropped for vactation etc.. are then put into a pool which line holders can use to swap their trips around. The first round of swaps are by seniority and second round is first come first serve. Barring certain holidays and a few days at the begining of each bid there are no rules other than maintaing legallity and min guarantee.

The only downside to this system is that composite holders are not given their schedule until 2 days before the bid starts. This setup ensures that almost nobody bids composite instead of a line so plan on flying some really crappy picked over trips until you can hold a hard line.

Pete2800 and lowflying,

Thank you very much, I really appreciate the info...i'm not a potential applicant, I've just heard rumblings that other places are trying to put into place a system like yours and was curious as to the details.

Cheers!

Its a very cool setup; our union guys would be glad to share info with anyone interested in more details.