MusicPilot

If they're not a fan of yours then it's kinda a black mark against the one interviewing. Not blacklisted.

Mr Hat

New rates, still very small and when things start moving it'll be a quicker upgrade to ride the top of the wave til retirement. If you want to do big heavy international, it might not be a good choice but if that's not important to you VA would be a good choice. The people there seem very happy and it looks like a really fun place to work. To me, fun is very important.

Busdriver320

I'd be careful about thinking when "things start moving" you're going to rocket to the left seat. VX is already over 1/2 of total a/c projected which means the most junior capt for awhile is already on-property or getting hired soon.
Of the top ~415 people, only 82 of them retire by 2025. 163 by 2030. 269 by 2035.
A/C deliveries are anemic for the next 5 years, to say the least.

None of that takes into account the merger with B6 within 4-7 years.

ShyGuy

Those are some precise numbers. Where can one find this?

4andCounting

To my knowledge there is no document available that has our retirement dates as a group. One of us tried to do it a few years back, but the company for some reason doesn't like the idea of a total retirement list. Who knows why. But generally speaking I would agree with the estimate posted. We have a large group of folks in their mid 50's at the company. So it will be a trickle for a while on retirements.

Our recent pay and retirment increase was significant. Will it stop a successful union drive? Probably not. But it will make it a lot closer vote than the slam dunk it was a few weeks ago. How do we compare to other opportunities out there? Post adjustment it's a little more grey. We now are significantly better paid. Does it line up with delta? Nope. Not even close. But with a mid seniority line being 17-19 days off and assuming reasonable quality trips, quality of life is very good here. And pay isn't bad. Most captains will be up in the $170-$180k range high flyers will be over $200k easy. Most FO's with 3-4yrs will be in the low $100k's. Quality of life is good as long as you don't have a difficult commute or live in base. Especially when you compare it to a legacy like American where yes your dollar value per hour is very high but your total credit per trips is pretty low, resulting in much less days off per month.

Merger talk is just speculation and conjecture at this point. I personally believe we are a very long way away from a tie up. And thank god. At our current size we would be destroyed as a pilot group. Talk of JetBlue and/or Hawaian is not worth worrying about at this point.

JFK/EWR/LGA is a triple airport base with flying that starts and ends in all three airports. It is small about 50'ish crews. I have heard it's both junior on the bottom of list and very senior at the top.

Really it's more about you. Where do you want to live? What kind of flying do you want to do? If you want to live on the west coast and don't care that much about flying heavies VX may be a great fit for you. I really like it here. I'm on 5th year FO pay. Bid pretty senior in my base, short commute and made about $115k last year. This year I'll do about $130k. I fly a lot per month, but because I get choice trips, I still get 14-17 days off a month with 95hrs of credit.

Hope that helps.

-4

dogismycopilot

If they asked you why you changed jobs from Spirit to VA in the DL interview, what would you say? Is that a good enough reason to make the jump?

Tee1Up

I dropped two recommendations very recently. One was invited for the last round of interviews and was hired. The other interviews this week. So, LOR's from the inside do help. But MusicPilot is right...if the person recommending you isn't someone doing well here to begin with, then it might not hold much merit with those that review it. It's a small company after all.

Sky4Me

Received pilot questionnaire email month back from HR... promptly sent it back and still no reply. Anyone knows how long it takes to get reply back.

Busdriver320

You can't, but it's accurate.

airspeed1974

Just finished the online assessment recently. While of course any company doesn't want a bunch of morons working there I am still trying to figure out why we need to go through these tests.

Take for example the one with agree, strongly agree, etc. There are so many questions that you just can't simple answer like this. I mean it's not that simple.

For example, one question "you like to work alone" Well sometimes yes I do! Another one "you care a lot about what others think" well that depends who!

I'll never forget doing the assessment at EK years ago in Dubai. We were all doing the same test and this guy from South Africa just blurts out "hey one of he questions is "you feel like someone is trying to rob you" well of course I do, I live in South Africa!!!!

Anyway, I think stick and rudder and how well you can get along with others much more important than being able to explain if a train going westbound at 81 mph.....