BeenThereDoneIt
Well-known member
- Joined
- May 4, 2009
- Posts
- 198
I just resigned from Avantair. Here is my experience.
The Planes/Pilots: The schedule is 7-on, 7-off (for now). The East Coast based pilots seem to have earlier starts and later finishes in comparison to the West Coast flyers. You start with 1 week paid vacation. You get 7 sick days, but it is a nightmare to use, as I discuss below. They have a marginal medical insurance plan. I suppose it is better than nothing if you really need one. I chose to decline the medical insurance. The retirement plan isn’t worth mentioning. The company is based at PIE in Clearwater, Florida. Domiciles are scattered across the country, but are only about 1/3 of what NetJets offers.
The Avanti’s are nice planes to fly, very quite, and roomy in the back. But, they handle very poorly on the ground due to an oversensitive hydraulic nose-wheel steering system and the lack of anti-skid brakes. Avantair has had several off-runway incidents and many, many blown tires. There have been aborted take-off’s because of steering systems that have a mind of their own.
The F.O.’s cannot fly with passengers on board until the F.O. gets 225 hours in the Avanti. Approximately 2/3 of the leg-times are live legs and about 1/3 are repo’s. As a result, it takes several months before the F.O. will gain enough flying time to actually get to fly the plane with a passenger on board. The F.O.’s aren’t allowed to do any night take-offs or landings either. The F.O.s don’t get Blackberry’s. FO’s must use their own cell phone and will get a small stipend from the company to help cover a portion of the cost for national calling.
Avantair has a PAC Board that tries it’s best to represent the pilots. As with any company, the PAC can only suggest and ask for things. Only a union contract will pull the pilots into the 21st century with pay and work rules. Some of the pilots are considering talks with one of the unions to see about representation. They need it.
The Good: Avantair seems like a solvent company. They have a unique niche in the market that appeals to a certain class of economic flyer. They are still growing, although aircraft orders have slowed down quite a bit. The vast majority of the pilots are professionals who take safety and their job seriously, but as with any company there are always a few who don’t use a checklist, or consistently have incidents/accidents, etc. Nearly every pilot likes the Chief Pilot. He is very personable and easy to talk to. The only problem is that at times, upper management tries to do his job for him. A lot of micro-management goes on.
Their stock value peaked around $5 per share in early 2008 and in December 08 fell to less than 50 cents per share. It is now trading around $1.75 per share. The pilots who bought in at the beginning lost their a@@es, but the prices are slowing climbing up. Let’s hope it stays that way.
The folks in Pilot Services do a pretty good job helping the pilots. The same number of personnel are now handling twice the number of pilots and aircraft as they did in the past, so we were starting to see some problems as a result.
The Bad: Avantair isn’t very pilot friendly. Right off the bat, they make you sign a contract that forbids you from flying another Avanti for 1 year after you leave Avantair. That doesn’t make sense to pilots who make their living flying planes. The D.O. has said that 90% of the pilots are happy with their job and 10% are not. He doesn’t speak with the same people I flew with. I saw about a 50/50 split at best, and most of them don’t care for the D.O. Standardization is still a problem. It was very hard to find 2 guys who did things the same way. Perhaps the new Procedures Manual will help address that ongoing problem.
It is “expected” that you will carry maintenance problems with you. We had one day where 17 planes (1/3 of the fleet) were in maintenance at the same time for repair/inspection. I was personally on 2 flights that really concerned me. On one flight we were asked if we were OK with continuing a flight at night with scattered IMC conditions at our destination……with an inoperative #1 gyro. The company knew that gyro couldn’t be MEL’ed. We refused, of course. On another flight we were told to keep flying a plane with low oil pressure in flight. I think some captains are intimidated into not grounding a plane when it needs to be.
More than one crew was “convinced by management” to fly out of Hamilton, Montana in the summer even though they didn’t meet the minimum take-off requirements as required by our OP Specs. The company doesn’t want to tell the owner’s “no” and the pilots were expected to put their careers at risk by violating the GOM.
Avantair policy manuals were changed to start charging its pilots $10 for crew meals. If you are given a 29 minute turn-around in the middle of the day and can’t grab any lunch, get ready to grab your wallet if you want a crew meal.
The sick-day policy sucked. You get 7 days per year. If you are sick more than 2 days they expect you to pay for a doctor’s visit and get a note. After three sick days they won’t send you out on your tour at all because they don’t think it is cost effective to airline you out at that point. If you are sick more than three days, be prepared to either lose some pay or burn all 7 sick days.
In December, 08 the company tried floating the idea of going from a 7-7 schedule to an 8-6 schedule of some sort. The details were never finalized because the pilots pitched a fit and many threatened to quit. That idea is idle for now.
Avantair is in the process of dropping its crew-to-plane ratio from 4.2 down to 3.8. This will put a huge squeeze on the pilots. As more of us quit and more planes are bought, that ratio will be reached and then hiring should have to start again. That might be good news for some of you that are looking for “anything.”
The Ugly: Pay! When I hired in I was told that upgrades to captain were running 9-12 months. I accepted the sub-standard F.O. pay on the premise that I would pay my dues the first year and get upgraded. That didn’t happen. Upgrades at Avantair were completely stopped in December 08. The training department is now telling FO’s to expect a second full year as an FO. Avantair thinks it’s second-year F.O.s are worth a whopping $37,000 per year. Due to the upgrade stoppage and insulting pay….I turned in my notice at my 1-year mark with the company. I can bartend 2 night per week and make more money than Avantair pays it’s FO’s, never being away from home, never missing a holiday or a kid’s birthday. It didn’t make financial sense for me personally to stay at Avantair.
As of today, F.O’s are expected to take the captain check-ride at their 12th month of employment (instead of an FO re-currency check), but not expect the actual upgrade or get the captain pay raise. The F.O.s are also required to do the captain “6-month checks” as a captain would, but not get captain pay. That puts the F.O. at risk for busting a check-ride, of which no compensation even exists.
There has been a recent rash of failures during upgrade/re-currency checks. I’m not sure if a lot of pilots suddenly became bad pilots, or if the company is tightening up things because of the number of resumes on their desks. The consensus seems to be the latter of the two.
I quit working overtime for them when most of my overtime pay wouldn’t show up on my paychecks. I shouldn’t have to keep calling them to get my pay straightened out. They did eventually give me all of my overtime pay, but it took several weeks and many, many calls and e-mails.
Synopsis: One guy who posts here says it is the best job he has ever had. It probably is. For me, it was the second worst job I’ve ever had. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Good luck.
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
The Planes/Pilots: The schedule is 7-on, 7-off (for now). The East Coast based pilots seem to have earlier starts and later finishes in comparison to the West Coast flyers. You start with 1 week paid vacation. You get 7 sick days, but it is a nightmare to use, as I discuss below. They have a marginal medical insurance plan. I suppose it is better than nothing if you really need one. I chose to decline the medical insurance. The retirement plan isn’t worth mentioning. The company is based at PIE in Clearwater, Florida. Domiciles are scattered across the country, but are only about 1/3 of what NetJets offers.
The Avanti’s are nice planes to fly, very quite, and roomy in the back. But, they handle very poorly on the ground due to an oversensitive hydraulic nose-wheel steering system and the lack of anti-skid brakes. Avantair has had several off-runway incidents and many, many blown tires. There have been aborted take-off’s because of steering systems that have a mind of their own.
The F.O.’s cannot fly with passengers on board until the F.O. gets 225 hours in the Avanti. Approximately 2/3 of the leg-times are live legs and about 1/3 are repo’s. As a result, it takes several months before the F.O. will gain enough flying time to actually get to fly the plane with a passenger on board. The F.O.’s aren’t allowed to do any night take-offs or landings either. The F.O.s don’t get Blackberry’s. FO’s must use their own cell phone and will get a small stipend from the company to help cover a portion of the cost for national calling.
Avantair has a PAC Board that tries it’s best to represent the pilots. As with any company, the PAC can only suggest and ask for things. Only a union contract will pull the pilots into the 21st century with pay and work rules. Some of the pilots are considering talks with one of the unions to see about representation. They need it.
The Good: Avantair seems like a solvent company. They have a unique niche in the market that appeals to a certain class of economic flyer. They are still growing, although aircraft orders have slowed down quite a bit. The vast majority of the pilots are professionals who take safety and their job seriously, but as with any company there are always a few who don’t use a checklist, or consistently have incidents/accidents, etc. Nearly every pilot likes the Chief Pilot. He is very personable and easy to talk to. The only problem is that at times, upper management tries to do his job for him. A lot of micro-management goes on.
Their stock value peaked around $5 per share in early 2008 and in December 08 fell to less than 50 cents per share. It is now trading around $1.75 per share. The pilots who bought in at the beginning lost their a@@es, but the prices are slowing climbing up. Let’s hope it stays that way.
The folks in Pilot Services do a pretty good job helping the pilots. The same number of personnel are now handling twice the number of pilots and aircraft as they did in the past, so we were starting to see some problems as a result.
The Bad: Avantair isn’t very pilot friendly. Right off the bat, they make you sign a contract that forbids you from flying another Avanti for 1 year after you leave Avantair. That doesn’t make sense to pilots who make their living flying planes. The D.O. has said that 90% of the pilots are happy with their job and 10% are not. He doesn’t speak with the same people I flew with. I saw about a 50/50 split at best, and most of them don’t care for the D.O. Standardization is still a problem. It was very hard to find 2 guys who did things the same way. Perhaps the new Procedures Manual will help address that ongoing problem.
It is “expected” that you will carry maintenance problems with you. We had one day where 17 planes (1/3 of the fleet) were in maintenance at the same time for repair/inspection. I was personally on 2 flights that really concerned me. On one flight we were asked if we were OK with continuing a flight at night with scattered IMC conditions at our destination……with an inoperative #1 gyro. The company knew that gyro couldn’t be MEL’ed. We refused, of course. On another flight we were told to keep flying a plane with low oil pressure in flight. I think some captains are intimidated into not grounding a plane when it needs to be.
More than one crew was “convinced by management” to fly out of Hamilton, Montana in the summer even though they didn’t meet the minimum take-off requirements as required by our OP Specs. The company doesn’t want to tell the owner’s “no” and the pilots were expected to put their careers at risk by violating the GOM.
Avantair policy manuals were changed to start charging its pilots $10 for crew meals. If you are given a 29 minute turn-around in the middle of the day and can’t grab any lunch, get ready to grab your wallet if you want a crew meal.
The sick-day policy sucked. You get 7 days per year. If you are sick more than 2 days they expect you to pay for a doctor’s visit and get a note. After three sick days they won’t send you out on your tour at all because they don’t think it is cost effective to airline you out at that point. If you are sick more than three days, be prepared to either lose some pay or burn all 7 sick days.
In December, 08 the company tried floating the idea of going from a 7-7 schedule to an 8-6 schedule of some sort. The details were never finalized because the pilots pitched a fit and many threatened to quit. That idea is idle for now.
Avantair is in the process of dropping its crew-to-plane ratio from 4.2 down to 3.8. This will put a huge squeeze on the pilots. As more of us quit and more planes are bought, that ratio will be reached and then hiring should have to start again. That might be good news for some of you that are looking for “anything.”
The Ugly: Pay! When I hired in I was told that upgrades to captain were running 9-12 months. I accepted the sub-standard F.O. pay on the premise that I would pay my dues the first year and get upgraded. That didn’t happen. Upgrades at Avantair were completely stopped in December 08. The training department is now telling FO’s to expect a second full year as an FO. Avantair thinks it’s second-year F.O.s are worth a whopping $37,000 per year. Due to the upgrade stoppage and insulting pay….I turned in my notice at my 1-year mark with the company. I can bartend 2 night per week and make more money than Avantair pays it’s FO’s, never being away from home, never missing a holiday or a kid’s birthday. It didn’t make financial sense for me personally to stay at Avantair.
As of today, F.O’s are expected to take the captain check-ride at their 12th month of employment (instead of an FO re-currency check), but not expect the actual upgrade or get the captain pay raise. The F.O.s are also required to do the captain “6-month checks” as a captain would, but not get captain pay. That puts the F.O. at risk for busting a check-ride, of which no compensation even exists.
There has been a recent rash of failures during upgrade/re-currency checks. I’m not sure if a lot of pilots suddenly became bad pilots, or if the company is tightening up things because of the number of resumes on their desks. The consensus seems to be the latter of the two.
I quit working overtime for them when most of my overtime pay wouldn’t show up on my paychecks. I shouldn’t have to keep calling them to get my pay straightened out. They did eventually give me all of my overtime pay, but it took several weeks and many, many calls and e-mails.
Synopsis: One guy who posts here says it is the best job he has ever had. It probably is. For me, it was the second worst job I’ve ever had. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Good luck.
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