FlyAuburn and all other hopefulls, dont be fooled, this is a great company and job, but we have our problems too. If you come from an airline background, the first thing that you will notice is we have no crew rooms or crew room friendships. Most of the senior guys think that they are aviation gods, when in reallity they couldnt get hired back in the 90s when every airline was hiring. They will tell you that the airlines sucked, but these are the guys that had to... 1)pay for training , 2)move to Columbus, 3) file their own flight plans, 4) get wake up phone calls at all hours of the night to ASAP somewhere. Or go to a regional or major and have a fixed schedule with none of this other bullsh!t.
These are the guys who got hired with a pulse, now that the union has made this a respectable job, the company can be more selective as to who they hire.
Dont get me wrong, this is a great place to be, but dont kid yourself, we do have our share of problems.
Good luck to all.
Wow! As arrogant a post as I've seen in a long time! Just FYI, I was hired back in '97 (just hit 11 years here). Yeah, I paid for my own training. So what? This place beat the heck out of where I was working, and I didn't have ANY apps in at the airlines at the time (nothing disqualifiying in my past, except maybe I only have an Associates degree. Just never had big-plane-itus)
I also didn't move to CMH. I commuted from CLE, and thought every minute of the two-hour drive was worth it compared to my last job. Again, not sure why being based at the only base Netjets had at the time is negative thing in your opinion.
Yes, we filed our own flight plans. Still not seeing any relevance towards what kind of quality pilots we were taking on back then. It was a fledgling company and we didn't have real dispatchers. No crime in that.
Yes, our old duty and rest rules allowed for early wake-up calls from the company, provided it didn't interrupt our necessary 10 hours of rest. Prospective rest in 91K fixed that, not some hot new breed of pilot you think NJA is hiring with our better contract.
And I certainly DO NOT consider myself an aviation god by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, part of the introductory briefing that I give to anyone I'm paired with whom I haven't flown with before is to remind them that I'm human, make mistakes, and would like to go home alive just as much as he would, so please don't hesitate to point out anything that doesn't look right. And I've found the vast majority of the senior guys to have the same attitude.
By the way, when you say 'the union' made this a respectable job, you're right. Just don't forget that the 'union' is the pilots that work here. The senior guys you seem to disdain so much have contributed quite a bit to making this the job it is now, whether you want to aknowledge it or not.
It's obvious, ski, you carry around quite a large chip on your shoulder about the senior pilots here. Did it ever occur to you that whether you're aware of it or not, this chip may be very visible to the senior folks you fly with, thus helping to create a defensive atmosphere which reinforces your opinion of the senior pilots? I'm no psychologist, but you might be your own worst enemy in this case.
