US Jets

[jetjumper]

Anybody have any info on US Jets based at AHN? Any info, specific or vague, would be welcome.

 

[gear_guy]

I have heard the owner is tough to work for. He has supposedly been in some trouble with the FAA in the past and cannot be listed on their certificate. He tries to get people to be listed on the certificate and then dictate how things are gonna go. From what I've heard, they have alot of good pilots there but the owner is a different story. My info is about 3 years old, maybe things have changed.

 

[LR25]

Gear guy is right on.

Your biggest enemy would be the owner.

The pay may fluctuate also.

Back a few years there was a pretty good pilot group.

I dont think it would be so bad for someone to get some experience.

THey have a couple airplanes based in various cities hualing checks, callsign "Grasshopper"

 

[jetjumper]

This may be a better topic for the cargo section but what is the deal with the new regs saying that checks can now be transferred electronically rather than having to be flown overnight. Are all these check haulers going to have to adapt or fold?

 

[Lear70]

US Jets used to be called Colvin Aviation after the owner, John Colvin. Really nice guy to talk to, but one h*ll of a shrewd businessman. Will do WHATEVER it takes to get the job done. Started the company with two barons and now has nearly a dozen lears last count, a large hangar on the west side of the airport with his own fuel farm, and his own mx department.

Rumor has it the Fed problem was due to flying Pax 135 on a 2nd class medical but not telling the F/O's he was flying with and got ramped checked somewhere in Atlanta (PDK, FTY, ?) by his own POI. After that nearly the entire department bailed within six months.

Bad news: Pay. And yes, it does fluctuate. Further bad news: Upgrades. Based purely on merit (i.e. how far you're willing to go for the "home team").

Good news: Very cool Chief Pilot - used to be one of the line guys who went to work for Delta then got laid off and came back as C.P. after everyone else had bailed. Further good news: Great MX, very little (if anything) skimped on. Further good news: Crews aren't expected to do mx stuff, just fly and clean the interior after each flight.

Pay for the check running stuff is pretty abyssmal (very tight profit margin). Captain pay at $38k?? F/O pay at $22k?? And yes, they were just discussing the electronic check implications on the freight board, go check it out.

If you live in or close to AHN and can get on the Pax side of things, not a bad operation these days. If you don't and must relocate or are looking at the freight side, I'd avoid it. The pay isn't worth it...

 

[jetjumper]

Anybody know the CP's name? PM me if you don't mind. Persh-e-ate it.

 

[Lear70]

Dan Smith - Chief Pilot (706) 549-2336

Incidentally, I was wrong about the pay. The MEM Check run with a Lear 25 is paying $28,000 yearly for the CA slot. No, I'm not kidding.

 

[jetjumper]

$28k...ouch

is that in addition to per trip pay or is that total annual pay?

 

[Lear70]

Total pay.

Colvin is a negotiator - there's probably a little room to move, but not much on that run. I understand it goes from MEM to BNA to CVG and back every night; start around 8 or 9 and finished by 1 a.m. Probably one of the cheaper-paying Fed contracts.

Wouldn't be bad as a 2nd gig but not many experienced Lear CA's are working a primary business job and want to fly until 1 in the morning every weeknight, and I'm sure you'd have to have some 20-series time for their insurance requirements.

 

[super88]

Background: owner is a former real estate developer/chicken farmer (yes, seriously). He may actually be a pathalogical liar as well. Doesn't have too much regard for his employees well-being. Once instructed a flight crew that had just performed a precautionary shutdown due to catastrophic oil loss to fill it up and fly it to mx.

Colvin lost his contract with the fed. and canned all of his pilots (with the exception of a few) for allegedly "conspiring against the Federal Reserve Bank" -or some nonsense- by refusing to fly broken airplanes.

It was supposedly a great place to build jet time until this recent fall-out; if you didn't mind working for seriously sub-standard wages in airplanes that had deferred maintenance issues.

I'd stay away.

 

[PB4UGO]

STAY AWAY FROM US JETS. They lost their Fed Res contracts, 95% of the pilots just got fired, their planes are up for sale. They may try to continue charter ops with 1 or 2 planes but let me re-emphasize STAY AWAY FROM US JETS (if you value your life and your license)

 

[LR25]

What happened that they lost the fed contracts?

 

[Lear70]

Probably failure to perform. The fed contracts are set up in such a way that if you fail to perform for a certain period of time and/or don't set up a replacement charter aircraft then you lose the job and they charter it out while they offer it up for bid again. If the crews started refusing aircraft for safety reasons and he was too cheap to charter it out, they'd yank the contract.

Picking some of them up would be tempting... some of those runs, especially the ones out of JAX and CLT were "bread and butter" runs, meaning that you could pay a crew a respectable wage and get good utilization out of the airplane (8 hours per night) therefore making a decent profit.

It WAS a sweet deal when I first hired on there... he had the two check runs I mentioned above, plus two charter 35's and added two 24's which were hotrods for some longer hops at cheaper prices (back when fuel was much cheaper). He had just built a brand new hangar, had great maintenance, his own fuel farm, bills were paid, insurance was Blue Cross Blue Shield... truly a first class 135 operator... for about a year.

Does anyone there have the exact runs that were being operated for the Fed Res, including times and routes? Thanks...