Skywest Culture
 

I'm a few months away from going to the regionals. I already have a CJO at one airline and am in the process of setting up an interview with PSA.

Honestly, Skywest would probably be my best choice because of bases; I'm a West coast guy and would prefer to stay there and not commute (long term anyway, realizing there is some commuting at some point).

My issue is the Skywest reputation. I'm asking for some honest feedback on culture. Every Skywest recruiter I have met tells me how they are the best and everyone else is a loser, if you want to be a loser go to another regional. Don't care for their attitudes or demeanor. Also I hear Skywest has a lot of lifers, mostly old guys that will never have a beer or dinner with you on a layover, slam clickers I've heard them called. Not fun to fly with at all. It also seems very conservative, I didn't join the military because I knew I wasn't a good fit for that culture, I don't know about joining the "..... Air Force".

Help clear up my misconceptions, what's it really like at Skywest?

99.99% of the crews are awesome. You'll know who to avoid pretty quick. Been here a little over two years and disliked maybe three people.

Don’t use these forums or recruiters as a judgment of how SkyWest guys are. Most the Lifers retire in under 10 years.. so shouldn’t effect you to much. Lifers are the top 300-400 of 4711 pilots...

Most folks here are pretty cool. I don't know of a single pilot who views themselves as superior to any other pilot at another airline. Except for making fun of Mesa pilots for tipping van drivers a quarter (no joke, I witnessed this with my own eyes, on two separate occasions that we shared a van from the same hotel in BFL.)

There are some slam clickers and slightly odd very senior guys, just like at any airline. But overall the people I fly with are pretty cool. That whole Mormon thing is a complete myth... I've never once, not once, heard religion discussed on a trip.

It's just an airline like any other.

Pretty much what’s mentioned above. I’ve been here between 5-6 years and have had good experiences in the left and right seat. I’d say 90-95% of the time it’s with a good crew, good attitude and folks who are happy to be at work.

The recruiters are like the cool kids at the local high school. Pay no attention to them, chances are you won’t ever see them again and even if you do odds are they won’t remember you and even if they do they won’t talk to you anyways.

Also, don’t let anyone tell you anything bad about the crusty old lifers. A lot of them are some of the most knowledgeable, coolest laid back people there are who are always down for a beer / dinner. (There are always exceptions)

Skywest pilots as individuals are generally a good bunch. The problem is as a pilot group-the current group is very much saddled with the bad decisions of the past. This mostly comes down to not having a union.

The company keeps things juuuuuust good enough to keep a union off the property. The pilots benefit by not paying union dues while still enjoying descent wages, but terrible work rules. The Skywest pilots also benefit from many safety and security initiatives which are mostly fought for and maintained by the unionized carriers.

If you are interested in Skywest as a very short term stepping stone to a major, that's fine. But you should realize that you may get stuck there or any other regional for a large number of reasons. In that light-Skywest is not a good place to be stuck.

As far as the west coast bases, be prepared to spend many many years getting to them.

Good training from what I have been told by friends.

IT support for pilots is top notch. Better than most majors.

Quite a few wack job senior Captains also, which is most likely irrelevant since they're all in Salt Lake.

Six of about 35 in last class got Fresno, two got Colorado Springs.

For the most part the people here are great, and has been said there are a few out there that you can bid avoid once you get a line. Getting to the West coast bases is a bit of a crap shoot but things are moving fast here and a FO slot should open pretty quickly. About 5 years for a CA slot, or so? Don't mingle, flirt, or date a FA.

The training was at one time the absolute best. Now it been cheapened with a massive amount of self study, tons of CBT's, and ground school is taught by new FO's that want to stay home and not fly. Lots of new sim instructors, some good, some not. IOE Check Airman, many new ones, same thing are good or crummy? Only a few are bent on failures as are the sim Check Airmen. There is pretty much no limit on the amount of IOE as long as there is some progress. 100 hours is not un heard of anymore.

Probably the biggest culture shift has been with management. Some of the CP's are cool but that number goes down with time. Upper management will rape you for a nickle. All of Crew Support prides themselves to push you to the brink of human endurance unless you call out fatigued. The fatigued call numbers are increasing exponentially.From the admins up everyone acts as if your paycheck is coming out of their pocket. Not having a union was at one time a bit of a good thing, but I'd vote one in right now if given a choice. All of our rules are carefully worded to be exploited by management, we have no recourse.

I will respectfully disagree with a previous poster about IT. It's taken them I don't know how many years, and I'm told over 15,000 Surface tablets to realize they suck. The company is reluctantly going with the ipad.

I would pose this similar question on all of the regional boards and get a pulse from that. If you are planning to go to the majors in a few years then I'd recommend following the money and not so much the base location.

But under no circumstances is this the same place it was years ago, most of it being not good.

Yup, not what it used to be. I probably would have stayed if it was. But they don't even want people to stay, regional business model needs turnover to keep the longevity down. Lack of turnover due to good QOL was probably costing them more than the good QOL. They just need to make sure they don't get more turnover than can keep up with, although I assume they a plan for that as well, coordinated with the major partners as to which flying gets dropped first.

Compared to the Majors OO I.T. Department is in this century.. and way better...

There you go again. What proof do you have to make such a bold statement? Or is this just more Skywest cheerleading?

Wow, and just like that, this thread suddenly requires "proof" for assertions made. Assertions made by pilots who don't even work at SkyWest are taken at face value, but a refutation made by someone who does is questioned. Wow.

From this OO pilot, amncmd is correct. eAML might be an example you could look at if you like.

The mobile hot spot in each plane, the extra batteries we have to carry, the connectivity issues that drop out minute by minute, the surface that uses more power than a nuclear submarine, the fact that it crashes all the time, having to do a hard reset almost every leg, the disaster issues if you divert, and see if you can find anyone here over a year that still has their first Surface POS!

I'm on the same ipad I've had for 5 years and I charge it once a week!

I charge my POS Surface the minute I get to the hotel and sometimes it still isn't charged in the morning, if it charges at all.

If this airline ran with the performance of IT, we'd have been shut down years ago. Can you imagine Delta or United with these issues?

The fact is Air Moroni takes in Dixie High School's best to save money, you get what you pay for.

That's not me, my hair is longer....

Yes, he works at the Mighty Skywest. So my question is valid, how is he able to compare it to mainline I.T. when he has no experience with it? It’s no different than you calling me out for not working at Skywest, is it? Wow is correct, if one is going to make such bold claims at least provide an example. Both you guys are providing good examples of the Skywest culture referenced in the first post

I don't disagree that much of what gets written here on APC is simply anecdotal, at best, and that more substantive information would be helpful. I agree that providing examples is helpful - and I did just that but it's not clear that you read or understood it. The eAML example I provided is something SkyWest IT has done an outstanding job on - I believe they were the first pt121 airline to get such a system approved and in place. There are other IT issues, to be sure, but they run pretty well overall.

I think your likening of my response to the recruiters described in the first post is misplaced. I don't think anyone is a "loser" for going elsewhere; everyones situation is different and therefore the best fit regional will be different as well (my post history will confirm that I've said similar things before).

My original surface is going on almost 3 years now. Still looking forward to the iPad.

As someone hoping to get into the industry soon, I'm just glad to hear that the vast majority of crews are awesome. Bad management is everywhere no matter the industry so its nice to hear that skywest is at least hiring personable people to fly with.

Sent from my LG-H931 using Tapatalk

I'm in the same boat. On my original surface still, but I am glad we are going to the ipad.

Looks like they have stopped updates pushing to the Surface... proboly a food thing. Heard Ipads November...


About I.T....
Just go to any AA pilots house and have him show you how they try to trip trade.. one on the company . Comand computer, one on the union website and one on the “paid” monthly website... ask how AS applicants feel about being locked out of the application because of i.t. Issues, ask to look at delta pilots scheduling programs... then if they flew for SkyWest. Ask there opinion.. yes. Our I.T. Department gets a bad rap.. (Dixie HS) but in the end. SWOL is leeps and bounds above the majors... The only one ive seen come close is Alaska pilot scheduling software..

My surface was one of the good ones, so I was very careful not to drop it or lose it. I'm not an apple fan boy, but ipads are better for this application, if only because they're more stable. But even so, I try to avoid doing IMC approaches on day one of any software update (especially with the surface).

How long do the FAT guys expect to be on reserve? How much have they flown?

Im on my original surface also. Only use it for flying. Seems guys i talk to with issues use it for Netflix, doing Taxes, ect...

Yeah, I only used it for work. For one thing don't really want some app to crash the OS at the marker for a CAT-II. Also don't necessarily want to company to have access to what I'm doing or where I'm doing it.

Word to the wise, people have been fired at other airlines (big airlines) because they took their EFB (ipads in most cases) on some trip while they were out "sick". Company asked them where they were, they said "home" and got fired for lying since the ipad is like a lojack. Apparently it tracks location even when completely off (to enable the "find my ipad" feature), and of course you can't take the battery out. Mine goes into a closet at home and stays there until my next trip.

Mailing your iPad to a relative while documenting each day at home actually sick with a doctors note sounds like a maybe genius yet dumb way to get out of some work with back pay.
Haha

Going a bit techie/nerdy on this, the iPad only tracks your location if you or (and this is the important part) the management software has configured it to do so. As you point out, the "Find my iPad" functionality does this, but it can also be enabled by the device management capabilities used in conjunction with management software such as Jamf Pro. You can easily disable this management software by removing the installed profiles via settings, but of course doing also alerts the IT group that the device is no longer under management and that's a bit of a red flag. (I used to be a software architect and engineering manager at Jamf, so know the process pretty well).

I believe your advice is best - just keep work and personal devices separate.

I'm former Skywest. I went to US Airways/American and compared to what we have Skywest is light years ahead. I'm specifically talking about swol and sked plus, vacation management, viewing and verifying your paycheck, and phone tree when calling scheduling.

How easy is it to get west coast base (I live I California would prefer in california) the recruiters always says about 4-6 months after finishing IOE. I never believe recruiters, would like some actual line pilots. I read that it's a crap shoot, but would like a estimate. Thanks!

I'm new but I'm pretty sure they aren't too far out for FOs. There were openings in SAN recently.

New DVR out, openings for CRJ are mostly SLC/DEN/ORD few SFO/PHX

ERJ is mostly SLC/ORD/LGA.

West coast will happen.. just never predict off what has happened, and just put your bid in and hope for the best..