I have been with Skywest for over seven years. Like most people at the regionals I never thought I would be here this long. In fact I never thought I would even fly an RJ. When I was hired on Skywest only had about ten of them, all in SLC and you had to be pretty senior to fly one. I figured 2-5 years to be on with a major. Most of the captains I flew with when I was a Brasilia FO got hired at United, Delta, Southwest and American. One guy had job offers from both United and Delta and was trying to decide which one to choose! Anyway we all know what happened to change the world. But let’s go back a little further to the mid to late nineties when I was looking at getting on with a regional. Comair and Continetal Express were PFT. It amuses me now when I hear of pilots at those companies telling others that they are lowering the bar. Back then PFT was about as low as the bar got. I imagine when you work for the type of company that would impose PFT it would inspire you to be fight hard to improve things and I guess you need to give credit to those pilot groups. Skywest never had PFT, they just didn’t pay you while you trained.
When 9/11 happened I was a new captain. All of a sudden all our lines turned to crap as the flying was significantly reduced. At my base we had just over two captains for every flying line. Skywest probably should have furloughed, they didn’t. I should have downgraded but nobody was forced to downgrade. They did make some of us fly in the right seat again because they had too many captains but they paid us captain pay for doing it. I think we were treated very fairly in this situation and management went above and beyond what was expected. I had friends at other regionals who were downgraded and furloughed.
Several years ago we were offered a deal with US Air which involved jets for jobs. Being a non union company that could have been forced upon us. Instead management put it up to a vote and it was overwhelmingly rejected by the pilot group, so it never happened
.
It is often brought up that we are at-will employees and can be fired at any time. I’ve heard stories about such and such being terminated because he wore an ALPA lanyard, or because he wouldn’t wear a nametag, or because of some ridiculous reason. I’ve heard those stories and I don’t believe them. There have probably been unfair dismissals but I personally don’t know of any. Here are s a couple of cases I do know of. #1 A pilot lands on 28R at SFO and is told to hold short of 28L. Blasts right across the runway, doesn’t confirm, doesn’t even look, and a heavy jet on short final is forced to go missed. Imagine if it had been 20-30 seconds later. This particular captain had several previous complaints and performance problems. Many FOs did not want to fly with this captain. In my opinion this pilot should have been fired. The result – a couple of weeks off with no pay and some retraining. #2. This year after several incidents the company changed the drinking before duty limit from 8 to 12 hours. After many complaints it was changed back to 8 hours. A pilot on a 30+ hour layover got incredibly intoxicated. It was on the first night so it wasn’t involving duty time but it was right around the time when all this drinking stuff was going down. This pilot found what he thought was his own hotel room but couldn’t get the door open, the occupant of the room opened the door to investigate and the drunk pilot insulted the hotel guest then proceeded to kick the door. Hotel security was called and the hotel called Skywest to complain about this pilot. The result – a written warning in his file. No firing, no time off. So yes we are at-will employees but in my experience I have seen more cases of people not being fired when I thought they should have been. You can screw up pretty big, but as long as you’re honest about it and have a good attitude it seems to me that you can get away with a lot.
Then there’s the whole issue of 700/900 for the same rate as the 200. I voted for that. Most will say that just proves my ignorance, and you may well be right. At the time we had no 700s on the property and I figured that by the time we actually got any we would already be 4-6 months into the 18 month TA. I figured a new TA would begin to get negotiated well before that one expired and then we would get a separate pay scale. Call me a stupid Kool aid consumer or whatever, that’s what I thought. OK now here’s for the real kicker, I actually don’t mind having the same rate - but it needs to be a blended rate. I like having the ability to bid for both airplanes, it gives me a much greater choice of schedules.
The last 1.2% raise was simply insulting and I voted against that. If it have had included back pay and had a definite expiration date I would have voted for it. Many say that we haven’t had a raise in over five years but I disagree. Performance Rewards equals more money in my pocket so that equals a raise. We lost profit sharing which to me was about 2% but PR has been around 6% for me. However inflation has been running at about 4% so we are in desperate need of some COLA.
On these boards you hear mostly from the very pro ALPA or the very negative ALPA but I believe there are more people at Skywest who are like me – not sure. We see the definite benefits of the union with nice tie pins, stickers for our flight bags, a magazine, and most importantly the insurance. We see the negatives, ALPA costs a LOT of money, they donate money to political parties that I don’t care for and they support causes that I don’t (age 60 for eg.) They create an adversarial relationship between work groups. I don’t want to see the United type atmosphere at Skywest where every work group hates every other work group. As I’ve pointed out, I’ve seen Skywest management do some very good things and some not so nice things. I don’t want to have the best contract in the industry until the company goes out of business (Comair?) nor do I want the lowest while the company turns record profits.
I’m going to hold on to my card for a while and think about it. I’m open to advice especially from those who have gone from non-union to ALPA or from an ALPA carrier to Skywest. Just try to hold back the insults, they do nothing to help your point of view.
When 9/11 happened I was a new captain. All of a sudden all our lines turned to crap as the flying was significantly reduced. At my base we had just over two captains for every flying line. Skywest probably should have furloughed, they didn’t. I should have downgraded but nobody was forced to downgrade. They did make some of us fly in the right seat again because they had too many captains but they paid us captain pay for doing it. I think we were treated very fairly in this situation and management went above and beyond what was expected. I had friends at other regionals who were downgraded and furloughed.
Several years ago we were offered a deal with US Air which involved jets for jobs. Being a non union company that could have been forced upon us. Instead management put it up to a vote and it was overwhelmingly rejected by the pilot group, so it never happened
.
It is often brought up that we are at-will employees and can be fired at any time. I’ve heard stories about such and such being terminated because he wore an ALPA lanyard, or because he wouldn’t wear a nametag, or because of some ridiculous reason. I’ve heard those stories and I don’t believe them. There have probably been unfair dismissals but I personally don’t know of any. Here are s a couple of cases I do know of. #1 A pilot lands on 28R at SFO and is told to hold short of 28L. Blasts right across the runway, doesn’t confirm, doesn’t even look, and a heavy jet on short final is forced to go missed. Imagine if it had been 20-30 seconds later. This particular captain had several previous complaints and performance problems. Many FOs did not want to fly with this captain. In my opinion this pilot should have been fired. The result – a couple of weeks off with no pay and some retraining. #2. This year after several incidents the company changed the drinking before duty limit from 8 to 12 hours. After many complaints it was changed back to 8 hours. A pilot on a 30+ hour layover got incredibly intoxicated. It was on the first night so it wasn’t involving duty time but it was right around the time when all this drinking stuff was going down. This pilot found what he thought was his own hotel room but couldn’t get the door open, the occupant of the room opened the door to investigate and the drunk pilot insulted the hotel guest then proceeded to kick the door. Hotel security was called and the hotel called Skywest to complain about this pilot. The result – a written warning in his file. No firing, no time off. So yes we are at-will employees but in my experience I have seen more cases of people not being fired when I thought they should have been. You can screw up pretty big, but as long as you’re honest about it and have a good attitude it seems to me that you can get away with a lot.
Then there’s the whole issue of 700/900 for the same rate as the 200. I voted for that. Most will say that just proves my ignorance, and you may well be right. At the time we had no 700s on the property and I figured that by the time we actually got any we would already be 4-6 months into the 18 month TA. I figured a new TA would begin to get negotiated well before that one expired and then we would get a separate pay scale. Call me a stupid Kool aid consumer or whatever, that’s what I thought. OK now here’s for the real kicker, I actually don’t mind having the same rate - but it needs to be a blended rate. I like having the ability to bid for both airplanes, it gives me a much greater choice of schedules.
The last 1.2% raise was simply insulting and I voted against that. If it have had included back pay and had a definite expiration date I would have voted for it. Many say that we haven’t had a raise in over five years but I disagree. Performance Rewards equals more money in my pocket so that equals a raise. We lost profit sharing which to me was about 2% but PR has been around 6% for me. However inflation has been running at about 4% so we are in desperate need of some COLA.
On these boards you hear mostly from the very pro ALPA or the very negative ALPA but I believe there are more people at Skywest who are like me – not sure. We see the definite benefits of the union with nice tie pins, stickers for our flight bags, a magazine, and most importantly the insurance. We see the negatives, ALPA costs a LOT of money, they donate money to political parties that I don’t care for and they support causes that I don’t (age 60 for eg.) They create an adversarial relationship between work groups. I don’t want to see the United type atmosphere at Skywest where every work group hates every other work group. As I’ve pointed out, I’ve seen Skywest management do some very good things and some not so nice things. I don’t want to have the best contract in the industry until the company goes out of business (Comair?) nor do I want the lowest while the company turns record profits.
I’m going to hold on to my card for a while and think about it. I’m open to advice especially from those who have gone from non-union to ALPA or from an ALPA carrier to Skywest. Just try to hold back the insults, they do nothing to help your point of view.
