Kalitta Air

[CWI]

I just accepted a B747 FO position with Connie and class starts on the April 26th. They have 52 crews and want to go to 75. Business is good and they are turning away business because of lack of crews and planes. Ned Wallace, founder of Polar Air, is now working for Connie and heads the Sales and Marketing Department, probably the reason business is so good. The class on the 26th will have 12 FO's and 6 FE's.

The interview is in Ypsilanti, Willow Run Airport, headquarters of Kalitta on April 7th. Friendly people and no BS. Everything was straight forward. All they wanted to see was your passport, medical and licenses. The simulator ride was in Denver, UAL's facitlity. The simride was on the 14th in the B747-200. Typical simride, takeoff out of LAX, climb out to 4000 feet at 180 kts, flaps 10. Level off at 4000 and accelerate to 200 kts. Then a decending turn to 3000 feet at 200 kts and 500 fpm. Vectored to a hold at Seal Beach, after entering the hold and doing one turn in the pattern I was vectored to an ILS to runway 24 right. Anything below 300 feet doesn't matter.

The schedule is 17 days on and 11 off on a 28 day month. Pay is 40 dollars per hour first year on a 56 hour guaranty. Second year goes to 60 dollars per hour. Well, what the hell, money isn't everything! With a little luck upgrading to Captain in a couple of years or less. Everyone is based in Ypsilanti, but nothing flies out of there, so you are commercialed out of your home airport.

A lot of the guys I interviewed with were furloughed Atlas pilots.

Prior B747, DC8 or B727 time would probably be helpful.

http://www.kalittaair.com

 

[T-Gates]

Hey man, thanks for a good post on Kalitta...not much info on here.

 

[chacka]

Actually all bid periods are 30 or 31 days. You do work 17/off the rest. Guarantee is correct though based on a full bid period, it is actually 60.7 hours.

 

[CSY Mon]

Kalitta pay can actually be quite good once ya get the left seat.
Sell yer days off and fly yer tail off and ya be way up there in the double six digit range after a few years.

Did same kind of flying and schedules with Tower Air.
Made more money than God from time to time, but job security ain't all that great....Just ask the original Kalitta guys, and the Tower Air guys, and the Southern Air Transport guys, etc..

Good luck with yer class however.
The -200 is a sweet airplane...Did it for 13 years for 3 different carriers.

 

[Dart]

Who do you send resume to? I looked on the site...something I missed?
Pm with the info..... that would be great! I want to go back to flying cargo.

 

[CSY Mon]

Dart.

PM on the way.

 

[CWI]

Kalitta Air
818 Willow Run Airport
Ypsilanti, Michigan 48198

Attn: Captain Richard Hagquist

or call

1-800-521-1590 and ask them where to fax it.

 

[CWI]

Kalitta Teamster website. You can find their current contract and read it if you like. Pay, scheduling etc.............

http://www.ibt747.org/airlines/kai/kai-index.html

 

[CWI]

I just finished my first week of Indoc with the April 26th class.

Ground school is about 33 days. You pay for your own hotel room and no perdiem during training in Detroit. Training pay is $2000 per month.

The simulator will be in MSP at NATCO, Northwest's training facility and that will run about 2 weeks.

Kalitta is getting ready to interview next week for the June class which will have 12 FO's and 6 engineers, who I believe will be recalls. The FO's are all new hires.

There will be another class of 12 FO's and 6 engineers in the early part of September. That is all the classes they have planned this year, but I think that might change if the training department can keep up with all the training.

They are very short of crews and Connie wants to add more airplanes as soon as the crews are trained. They have 11 operational B747's and want to go to possibly 15.

They will be upgrading 28 FO's as soon as we get out on the line to fill their vacancies. I believe 6 of the 28 will be starting class next week.

The schedule is a 30 day month 17 days on and 13 off. If you want overtime there is no shortage of it!

Send resumes to:

[email protected]

They will be forwarded to the Chief Pilot and put into his data base.

 

[EMBATP]

Questions

What is average number of hours of pay per month for new F.O.'s?

How is upgrade determined and how long?

Any scheduled stuff or all charter type flying?

Where do most of their trips take you? Long overnights?

I know a lot of the flying is in support of the Iraq war. What happens when that ends?

Are the engineers PFE's or do they hire into the panel?

what kind of time/experience/aircraft is getting interviewed/hired?

thanks.

 

[CWI]

What is average number of hours of pay per month for new F.O.'s? About a 60 hour guaranty, but you could probably fly 100 hours per month if you want. They are cancelling flights because of lack of crews.

How is upgrade determined and how long? Seniorty order and it looks to be about 2 years, but could be less depending on how many airplanes there are on the property.

Any scheduled stuff or all charter type flying? Mostly schedule stuff and some charter. You can view the daily schedule at www.kalittaair.com.

Where do most of their trips take you? Long overnights? See the schedule on their website and the hotels are nice.

I know a lot of the flying is in support of the Iraq war. What happens when that ends? There are always opportunities in freight and actually very little of Kalitta's flying is in support of the war.

Are the engineers PFE's or do they hire into the panel? After all the furloughed engineers are recalled they say they will start hiring second officers, but I would still think they will hired into the right seat. Time will tell?

what kind of time/experience/aircraft is getting interviewed/hired? Out of the 12 FO's 5 have B747 types, 4 have B747 FO time and the other three have B767 time and one guy has DC9 FO time.

 

[festus]

Good info. Just to clear up - can you be commercialed out of any airport you designate as home or a company gateway? Thanks.

 

[pilotyip]

9 mo Capt?

One of our ex-pilots has been there since July of last year, and he told me he had bypassed a Capt's bid because he did not feel he was ready at 250 hours and 27 landings. He is going to wait until he has 500 hours in type.

 

[steveg]

About the 17 day schedules. Is it always 17 days in a row, or is that split up between 2 or 3 shorter trips? Are there any flights in and out of YIP? Is living in Detroit any easier, would you be home anymore?

Thanks

 

[nosewheel]

steveg

The lines are mostly set up first half last half however the head screw scheduler is trying to build split lines just to piss off the crews. They hope to have him fired in the very near future because to date, No one flys there assigned line. Your home airport can be anywhere however if you are on days On, you are responsible to get yourself to YIP by the first day your line starts so they can commercial you to where-ever. In most cases its a matter of them finding the cheapest ticket, which will determine if you need to hitch-hike to YIP or not. Don't be fooled by what you hear. The place is a real mess right now mainly because of Scheduling and piss poor managment.

 

[mrvmo]

Isn't having M.R. in scheduling just a breath of F*%#in fresh air?

 

[ATR-DRIVR]

EVERY airline has a MR is scheduling....at least one.

 

[nosewheel]

Yes but they should have put a bullet between his eyes at S.A. But oh no...they had to send him to Kalitta.

 

[B-atch]

Kalitta sounds like a great deal, but the place is owned by ONE GUY, Connie. The man is 67 yrs old... God forbid that one fine day he KICKS the BUCKET, say good by... No one left to fill his shoes.....just my 2 cents:-]

 

[Airpiraterob]

his sons are there and running things too on the other end of the business. theyre not dummys.

 

[CWI]

Kalitta will be interviewing this week in MSP. They changed things a little bit, now you interview in the morning and have the simulator evaluation ride in the evening. This will save everyone time by turning the interview process into 1 day. I believe they are going to be inteviewing 30-35 guys. This is to fill the June class and for the next class, either August or September. I heard they will be adding a 4th class for this year, instead of only 3.

Training is almost 5 weeks in Ypsilanti, 2 weeks of indoc, including Security, International, CRM, 2 weeks of Systems Grounds school and the 5th week is a shorter one which includes, and an exit oral given by a check airman and training on the new FMA-900, which includes a glass PFD and Nav display, similar to the B757, but with no VNAV. Then about 2 weeks of simulator training and then waiting your turn to get IOE.

It is true that it is tough to stay on your line, but because the nature of the business it is almost unavoidable. The crew scheduling department chief scheduler is an ex-navy helicopter pilot and has worked for Atlas and Southern Air before coming to Kalitta. He has a tough job and I wouldn't want it! One reason is that they are so short of crews, so short they are turning away business and cancelling flights. I don't believe he's doing anything to intentionally piss off the crews, more likely it's the schedulers who take over after he goes home.

Connie has authorized time and one half for overtime now, so you can make some pretty good money if you decide to work overtime. They cannot force you to work overtime, if you don't want to, you can just say no!

On the other hand upgrades are coming pretty fast, but the training is not to be taken lightly. It's tough and if you bust out it's going to be at least a year or more before you will get another chance. There are some FE's in the right seat now with very little experience who based on seniority could hold the left seat, but wisely decided to get more experence before upgrading. There have been more than one FO, who for one reason or another has not pass the simulator ride or IOE.

Connie want's to add more aircraft to his fleet and will as soon as the crews are trained to fly them. He owns all for his aircraft and is in a very good financial position, which is more than I can say from the airline that I was furloughed from, not to mention any names, but it sounds a lot like "Looser Airways."