Quote:
Originally Posted by Ray Red
Who in there right mind would invest in a start up airline flying 50 seat RJ's in this environment? Why not just buy a bunch of Powerball tickets? At least you can go to bed at night thinking there might be a chance.
Nobody has ever gone out of business flying too small a plane that was always full.... conversely, many have vanished into history flying too big a plane that was always empty.
Their business model is sound, the growth is slow but organic, and larger planes are in the business plan as loads and demand increase. They’re essentially an ULCC operating smaller jets... for now.
They do not fly in somebody else’s paint pretending to be somebody else. They advertise and sell their own tickets.
They have a lot of maturing to do, but are doing well all things considered. They also treat their pilots much better than other regionals.
Home based
No crashpads
No airport standby
No short call RAP unless a hotel is provided
Pilots keep all travel air, hotel and rental car miles.
Captains have company credit card for short notice emergencies or offline charter catering, fuel
Single occupancy hotel in training
Crew cars in training
Most RON’s have crew cars to use
Crew meals for duty days over 12 hours
Salary job, cancellations or lost days in hotels doesnt cut pay
The bad:
The schedules are always late and subject to change at anytime. Best to just think of it as a workday schedule, not an actual flight schedule.
Lots of cancellations still due to maintenance on some tired E145’s. Their mx dept does a good job, they just mistakenly bought aircraft from someplace an experienced airline would not buy planes from. Dispatch reliability is improving a lot compared to last year. They’ve fixed everything, and now it’s basically normal type stuff.
They will multi-leg you to/from work to save $5 even if it costs you 4 extra hours. You can make deals with them when you find similar priced flights.
Truth be told, I would not have left there if I hadn’t been offered a golden ticket elsewhere in heavy equipment with the associated heavy paycheck. I liked the people there, the check always came (sometimes not until midnight, but it came), the flying was fun into some cool destinations, the equipment was well maintained, safe, and if there was a problem, the CA’s word was final.
This will be a great place to work once they get some details worked out, and hire a few more folks. Lots of growing pains in the process. All things considered it’s still better QOL than most regionals. The pay scales are decent for the equipment. The FO side could use another bump though IMHO