ASTAR Phone Call/Rejection Letter

[JohnnyPilot]

I have a friend who works at Astar, he said to others who were asking about the place... "Do NOT come here (Astar) it is career suicide to sit in the back seat for this long!"

Words of wisdom... stay current and in the game.

 

[Narco-leftseat]

It seems like a really easy job if you live there.

J/S ing into the Hoot and being gone 7-8 days straight grinds on you. One day, you'll wake up and think....."I don't have to live like this....I'm going to apply to some other carriers....even if the pay is less...first year blues, etc.....

So you apply some places and find out that you are useless in the industry having sat at the engineer's desk that long !! Even your coveted 1000 hrs PIC Turbine mean nothing at Southwest and the likes because it is dusty and old.

"Astar might re-fleet and might expand"......man,..we've been hearing that for a decade !!! Is it better then a regional job, yeah, but if you have a choice, choose a flyin' seat.

Good luck all

 

[LarryinTN]

"Astar might re-fleet and might expand"

Something for a potential new-hire to consider is the impact of a re-fleet. Right now, roughly one-third of the Astar seniority list is on the panel. If those airplanes are replaced with two-pilot airplanes there will be a significant amount of surplus pilots who will have to be absorbed. It's a painful process which we, at ABX, have been going through as our DC8 fleet shrank from 35 airplanes to the current 5. We replaced DC8s with more than one 767 for each DC8 lost but that wasn't nearly enough to mitigate the effect and the majority of our back seaters were PFEs and most of them didn't upgrade to a pilot seat.

 

[767pilot]

It was misery at UPS when we started to replace 727's with Airbuses. Real stagnation with no hiring for a few years. The company even threatened furlough at one point.

 

[shooter]

re-fleet

Don't you think the 727's and DC-8's will be flown for some time at Astar? I hear you guys talking about rumors of a re-fleet, but with your company buying the 72's in JAN and the last DC-8 a month or so ago kind of sounds like you will be flying them for quite a while. When you do get aircraft I think it will be more for increase in fleet size rather than replace what you have. At least that how I would view it, but I am just an outside observer to Astar.

 

[jvrac]

Thanks for the insight from those on the inside. I am a former Astar intern and am thinking about coming over, but it sounds like I should stay where I am for now and wait things out. If you did live near Wilmington though, how would QOL be for an FE on reserve? What do reserve schedules look like at ASTAR?