Originally Posted by Borat Sagdiyev

I've been here over a year, long enough to have walked the picket line last year (and I did). Since ABX Air is hiring, I'll add my thoughts and observations on ABX Air so far, based solely on what I have seen and heard. A caveat: much, maybe most of this, is based on rumor. Corrections welcomed. Even worse, much of it is based on my opinions.

• This is a great pilot group, the best I've ever been a part of. We don't have enough clowns to legally call it a circus.
• The captains I've worked with have, nearly without exception, treated us new-hires very well.
• I am new to Boeings, and I really enjoy flying the 767 to some challenging places with people who have been doing it for a while. This job has provided some excellent experience.
• Lack of any housing assistance or per diem during new-hire initial isn't keeping up with the times, and puts a financial and logistical burden on new-hires. Keep in mind, year 1 pay is $42,366. Even most regional airlines provide good hotel accommodations and per diem.
• Second year pay isn't bad, but with patience and planning, you'll make much more during year 2 at a top-tier carrier.
• Reassignment pay (happens when a line holder gets his scheduled trip changed) and junior man pay can substantially increase your monthly haul. You can only refuse a junior man assignment under limited conditions. After 6 junior man days in a year, they have to give you compensatory days off, but they can junior man you on those.
• The instructors are excellent. Standardization is quite good.
• CVG, otherwise known as the Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky International Airport, is our only crew base. It is geographically in Kentucky, but is under the "Ohio" tab in the paper Jepps we still use (for now).
• The pilots here hired before the 151s went through a few circles of Hell by staying here through some very traumatic events that surrounded the DHL acquisition. So the airline still exists, and we are working under a concessionary agreement signed in 2009. Many pilots were furloughed long enough to drop off of the seniority list so the company would not have to recall them to the higher end of the pay scale. This delay led to a staffing shortage last year that saw senior pilots working almost every day.
• The new VP of Flight Ops is proving effective at making small changes to our day-to-day existence at ABX, and acts on pilot suggestions and observations out on the line. It remains to be seen how this can/will scale to the rest of the operation. If there is an upheaval in Wilmington, say after a contract gets signed, I hope he sticks around.
• I am optimistic about the contract. As one of our negotiators reminded me, these things do take time, and things always look pretty bleak until they don't. The shenanigans are familiar to anyone who's been on a property during contract talks.
• Morale here is low. With each captain I meet, I get asked 'where do you have applications at?' At first, just the old hands were inveterate pessimists, while the 151s were optimistic about Amazon and the future. It's evening out now.
• Administrative tasks are very paper-oriented and centralized in the hands of a few people at HQ in Wilmington. Monthly line bidding is done on paper. It took me several months to get paid for my overtime while on first-year pay. Getting in touch with the gentleman in charge of these things can be challenging. Online training has recently been streamlined.
• Open time is processed manually by schedulers, with severe restrictions on what is considered an equitable trade, hindering your ability to fine-tune your schedule.
• We have no duty/trip rigs.
• Attrition among the 151s is quite high.
• Our company president, David Soaper, has said some interesting things to the pilot group. In spite of attrition, he mentioned possible pilot furloughs for January. We are now hiring! Besides the uncertainty mentioning the f-word causes, one questions the judgment of such a move in this pilot market; it's not 2009 anymore! Pilots have initiated/stepped up job search activities based on the Mr. Soaper's furlough statements. And for many, it's not because they're afraid of being furloughed.
• Management wants to concentrate on our two largest customers, DHL and Amazon, yet some months ago, our president turned down additional DHL flying due to staffing. The CEO, to his credit, made him take the flying anyway. I'm no fan of Atlas's labor relations, but their ability to find new business is admirable.
• Compounding the difficulty of night flying are trips that swap between day and night flying.
• Upgrade time is an unknown. We aren't growing now, but there will be lots of retirements in the next several years. As at any other ACMI, new business will make things move very quickly. On the flip side, the loss of a major customer would slow things down considerably.
• An ACMI, like a FFD regional airline, is a leasing company. There are ramifications to this besides the difficulty of trying to explain to your aunt who you actually work for.
• Being on reserve means you can be assigned R1, or airport reserve for the contractual duty day limit; my last R1 was from early, early morning to lunchtime. Sometimes you can get your own bunk room and sleep through it. Reserve pilots have complained about multiple R1s in a row.
• Reserve pilots have little to no say in their schedules while on reserve. R1s can be great for a local guy, but not as great for a commuter who would rather be out flying and sleeping on the road.
• Sometimes scheduling will honor requests by reserve pilots for open trips in seniority order, and sometimes they use the FIFO (first in, first out) list.
• Most of our flights have catering that is little more than instant coffee and water. There have been small improvements in quality and selection when we are entitled to box lunches, which is a change from nasty emails about pilots requesting substitutions.
• ABX Air, Inc. is one of two airlines under the ATSG umbrella, the other being ATI. ATSG also owns a few other organizations which ABX and ATI pay for their services.
• And now the only direct comment I'll make on negotiations: the management group has to compete with other ACMI carriers for business. This might even be true to an extent when competing for new pilots. However, to retain pilots, they aren't competing with Atlas or Southern; they're competing with Alaska, UPS, FedEx, and United.

This could be a great flying job, but it is not; it is good enough for the time being. This could change! I hope it does. We obviously need a suitable contract for starters.

And we need clarity about the future of this place. Patience helps here, but patience is finite, so I suppose this is where leadership would normally come in.

The goings-on I see don't tell me much about the goings-on I can't see; maybe there's a corporate endgame. Even if we knew what that were, we don't know what it would mean to us as employees. I hope that when we get a new contract, we experience cultural changes that enable this job to get much closer to its full potential.

Originally Posted by Borat Sagdiyev

I've been here over a year, long enough to have walked the picket line last year (and I did). Since ABX Air is hiring, I'll add my thoughts and observations on ABX Air so far, based solely on what I have seen and heard. A caveat: much, maybe most of this, is based on rumor. Corrections welcomed. Even worse, much of it is based on my opinions.

• This is a great pilot group, the best I've ever been a part of. We don't have enough clowns to legally call it a circus.
• The captains I've worked with have, nearly without exception, treated us new-hires very well.
• I am new to Boeings, and I really enjoy flying the 767 to some challenging places with people who have been doing it for a while. This job has provided some excellent experience.
• Lack of any housing assistance or per diem during new-hire initial isn't keeping up with the times, and puts a financial and logistical burden on new-hires. Keep in mind, year 1 pay is $42,366. Even most regional airlines provide good hotel accommodations and per diem.
• Second year pay isn't bad, but with patience and planning, you'll make much more during year 2 at a top-tier carrier.
• Reassignment pay (happens when a line holder gets his scheduled trip changed) and junior man pay can substantially increase your monthly haul. You can only refuse a junior man assignment under limited conditions. After 6 junior man days in a year, they have to give you compensatory days off, but they can junior man you on those.
• The instructors are excellent. Standardization is quite good.
• CVG, otherwise known as the Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky International Airport, is our only crew base. It is geographically in Kentucky, but is under the "Ohio" tab in the paper Jepps we still use (for now).
• The pilots here hired before the 151s went through a few circles of Hell by staying here through some very traumatic events that surrounded the DHL acquisition. So the airline still exists, and we are working under a concessionary agreement signed in 2009. Many pilots were furloughed long enough to drop off of the seniority list so the company would not have to recall them to the higher end of the pay scale. This delay led to a staffing shortage last year that saw senior pilots working almost every day.
• The new VP of Flight Ops is proving effective at making small changes to our day-to-day existence at ABX, and acts on pilot suggestions and observations out on the line. It remains to be seen how this can/will scale to the rest of the operation. If there is an upheaval in Wilmington, say after a contract gets signed, I hope he sticks around.
• I am optimistic about the contract. As one of our negotiators reminded me, these things do take time, and things always look pretty bleak until they don't. The shenanigans are familiar to anyone who's been on a property during contract talks.
• Morale here is low. With each captain I meet, I get asked 'where do you have applications at?' At first, just the old hands were inveterate pessimists, while the 151s were optimistic about Amazon and the future. It's evening out now.
• Administrative tasks are very paper-oriented and centralized in the hands of a few people at HQ in Wilmington. Monthly line bidding is done on paper. It took me several months to get paid for my overtime while on first-year pay. Getting in touch with the gentleman in charge of these things can be challenging. Online training has recently been streamlined.
• Open time is processed manually by schedulers, with severe restrictions on what is considered an equitable trade, hindering your ability to fine-tune your schedule.
• We have no duty/trip rigs.
• Attrition among the 151s is quite high.
• Our company president, David Soaper, has said some interesting things to the pilot group. In spite of attrition, he mentioned possible pilot furloughs for January. We are now hiring! Besides the uncertainty mentioning the f-word causes, one questions the judgment of such a move in this pilot market; it's not 2009 anymore! Pilots have initiated/stepped up job search activities based on the Mr. Soaper's furlough statements. And for many, it's not because they're afraid of being furloughed.
• Management wants to concentrate on our two largest customers, DHL and Amazon, yet some months ago, our president turned down additional DHL flying due to staffing. The CEO, to his credit, made him take the flying anyway. I'm no fan of Atlas's labor relations, but their ability to find new business is admirable.
• Compounding the difficulty of night flying are trips that swap between day and night flying.
• Upgrade time is an unknown. We aren't growing now, but there will be lots of retirements in the next several years. As at any other ACMI, new business will make things move very quickly. On the flip side, the loss of a major customer would slow things down considerably.
• An ACMI, like a FFD regional airline, is a leasing company. There are ramifications to this besides the difficulty of trying to explain to your aunt who you actually work for.
• Being on reserve means you can be assigned R1, or airport reserve for the contractual duty day limit; my last R1 was from early, early morning to lunchtime. Sometimes you can get your own bunk room and sleep through it. Reserve pilots have complained about multiple R1s in a row.
• Reserve pilots have little to no say in their schedules while on reserve. R1s can be great for a local guy, but not as great for a commuter who would rather be out flying and sleeping on the road.
• Sometimes scheduling will honor requests by reserve pilots for open trips in seniority order, and sometimes they use the FIFO (first in, first out) list.
• Most of our flights have catering that is little more than instant coffee and water. There have been small improvements in quality and selection when we are entitled to box lunches, which is a change from nasty emails about pilots requesting substitutions.
• ABX Air, Inc. is one of two airlines under the ATSG umbrella, the other being ATI. ATSG also owns a few other organizations which ABX and ATI pay for their services.
• And now the only direct comment I'll make on negotiations: the management group has to compete with other ACMI carriers for business. This might even be true to an extent when competing for new pilots. However, to retain pilots, they aren't competing with Atlas or Southern; they're competing with Alaska, UPS, FedEx, and United.

This could be a great flying job, but it is not; it is good enough for the time being. This could change! I hope it does. We obviously need a suitable contract for starters.

And we need clarity about the future of this place. Patience helps here, but patience is finite, so I suppose this is where leadership would normally come in.

The goings-on I see don't tell me much about the goings-on I can't see; maybe there's a corporate endgame. Even if we knew what that were, we don't know what it would mean to us as employees. I hope that when we get a new contract, we experience cultural changes that enable this job to get much closer to its full potential.

Originally Posted by goinaround

Very eloquently put. I guess my only concern is that I would regret leaving two years from now.

Originally Posted by HVYMETALDRVR

Do you have any scheduled runs through Japan or Hong Kong?

Originally Posted by motorclutch

Since we are no longer the "desired" Hete *****es........we've been replaced by ATI.......we will never see the need to fly to those locations again. Plus it seems we've fired all our loadmasters.....no need for charter work either!