Vantaggi
The best part of working for this company are the crews you fly with. Some of the overnights are really enjoyable and with a good crew, it's almost like you're not even at work. Our scheduling flexibility with the Schedule Adjustment Period (SAP) is unlike anything else in the industry (when it works, see cons). Knowing that I'll be able to get whatever days off I want, and work as much or as little as I want is truly the best part of our contract. I have never missed a birthday, holiday, or other family function since I started here 2-2.5 years ago. Travel benefits are fantastic. You are the same priority as mainline AA.
Svantaggi
This is where the list gets long. Unfortunately, management has turned this place into the most toxic environment I have ever experienced. The year of 2014 and the first half of 2015 were great. We were growing very rapidly and upgrades were abundant. The contract was followed and the overall morale was positive. I was recommending people to come here left and right. Then management decided we were too expensive (even though we had industry average pay rates at the time). They started violating the contract on a seemingly weekly basis under the shroud of new, one-sided, "contract interpretations." The biggest of these being the Critical Coverage Pay (CCP) provision. It was common to have 15 days off and credit 130 hours of pay. The concept behind CCP was that it punishes the company for being understaffed and rewards the company for being properly staffed. When the Company found themselves understaffed for too long, they started manipulating our reserve grid to restrict and prevent us (pilots) from being able to swap trips and get important days off or swap into trips for extra money. Someone tell me how NEEDING -23 captains (yes, negative) on a particular day makes any sense. I'm still waiting for an acceptable explanation. This practice has continued for the last year and a half causing a SERIOUS degradation in our quality of life. Next up are hotels. Our contract already has a provision that allows us to get hotels in base on a case by case basis. The Company takes this as a "never" so don't expect a hotel due to a cancellation on a trip. We don't have commuter hotels like nearly every other regional. Why is this a big deal you may ask? We only have 1 commutable base which is realatively senior so expect to commute to an outstation and buy a hotel or crash pad on 1 of your 11 days off each time you have an assignment. Next up on the gripe list are the quality of our trips. Would you like flying a 4-day trip and only getting paid 12 hours? Because that's essentially the only thing in opentime. The average trip value is 17 hours for a 4-day, 11 hours for a 3-day, and 5 hours for a 2-day. These schedules SUCK. There is no better way to say it. Part of our staffing issues are a direct result of terribly inefficient (read: low credit) schedules. You have to work more days just to bring home the same amount of money as you used to just a year ago. We have a pathetic minimum daily credit of 3.5 hours with caveats on the first and last day where you usually don't get it. Management is so bent on the fact that the flow is the best thing since sliced bread that they fail to understand that a new hire pilot isn't stupid. They can figure out that with 1,200 pilots and only flowing 5/month, that it will take them 15+ years to get to AA. Flow is a joke and a disgrace for anyone above ~500 seniority. They have withheld or metered the flow the last 2 years citing staffing concerns. This means the pilots scheduled to flow will lose a few hundred seniority numbers at mainline. Due to managements persistence with being cheap, they've failed to adapt to market changes. Every other regional except Mesa has raised pay and benefits as a result of the pilot shortage. What has that caused here? No new pilots. Here we are 4 months into the year and we've just barely hired more than we did in 1 average class last year. This is not sustainable for a company if they want to continue growing. Our seniority list has been consistently shrinking; the opposite of what it should be doing when we are adding airplanes. Finally, unlike other airlines, our pay starts when the airplane starts moving. In their effort to stay cheap (see a trend?) PSA Airlines has a longstanding practice of starting your pay on pushback and not doors closed, brake released. This means that you could be sitting for 10 minutes on the ramp waiting for push back not getting paid because there is a plane behind you. If you're late because of this expect a phone call from the chief pilot. Employee/employer relations are absolutely terrible here.
