Originally Posted by pilotinghombre

I was a Captain qualified in two different aircraft at Ameriflight for almost two years. Out of the four 135 companies I have worked at in my career, sadly Ameriflight is the worst company I have ever worked at. Upper management is very dishonest in many different ways. I should have quit from the start. My initial application was to be home based Captain. Then I was told I had to pick a base! I wanted to go to Burbank, but they told me Burbank was closed. Then the bid sheet comes out the next day and Burbank was open!!! Another pilot was given Phoenix. He bought a house in Phoenix than the company moved him to Salt Lake without notice! Eventually that pilot got so fed up he quit.

Pay was a constant problem. I had to fight for my moving expense bonus because HR was saying that two weeks of hotel, and car rental all comes out of my bonus. Eventually they paid the bonus. It took them two weeks to do that, and for two weeks dispatch had me on the schedule and was calling asking why I wasn't showing up for work! Meanwhile, I had never been given travel to my base lol. The company actually also skipped me on two paychecks in a row! They only paid me on a debit card when I threatened to quit. Per diem pay was also incorrect and never paid on time.

Maintenance was also a huge problem. Mechanics at Ameriflight are paid very little so there is a lack of experienced mechanics for the old planes. Mechanics will fight with you over squawks and frequently write "Could not duplicate." Some of the senior pilots have to give maintenance ideas on how to fix the planes. As soon as the mechanics start to figure out how to work on these 1970 and 1980s planes, they leave for better paying jobs.

Training was a horrible experience. The chief pilot is just rude. If you go up to him and say hello, you might get a hello back, usually he just walks away. This happened to me once. I asked the other pilots if I did something wrong. They laughed and said that is just how he is lol. The current director of training doesn't even have a flying background and he has no idea what is going on. If you get lucky and get a nice training captain you will be fine. However, get a bad training captain and he will send secret notes to the director of training and program manager about how bad you are doing. Then all the secret notes will be looked at (notes you never saw, so you couldn't defend yourself against them) and you will be fired. Amazing that the company does this. I saw so many decent pilots kicked out of the company or told to leave, yet Ameriflight is contracting out their routes because they don't have pilots! Ameriflight also has several outstanding bills that they owe FBOs. One place I flew to refused to fuel our planes anymore, until Ameriflight paid the fuel bill!

Three bases also closed in the 18 months I was there. The company is still recovering from the last CEO embezzling funds. The new CEO is a nice guy and seems like he is trying, but I don't think he can be successful unless he gets rid of the horrible upper management pilots and revamps the training department. I think perhaps the biggest problem is that the upper management pilots don't live in Dallas where the company is headquartered. They aren't even at work half the time. Their idea of work is doing a company conference call and then doing surprise line audits on route pilots to bully them and tell them everything they are doing wrong. Meanwhile nothing gets done, morale is low, paperwork and pay is a constant disaster. With management's attitude, if you work for this company, you really have to know how to protect yourself. It is single pilot IFR without workable autopilot, without altitude alerters, in old worn down aircraft and some of the aircraft even have no GPS (a frequent annoyance to atc when they clear you for a GPS approach or route). UPS will also try to push you, cuss you out, and blame you for everything. If you make even the smallest mistake, expect remedial training and a write up from Ameriflight management.
Lastly, the schedule is horrendous. Agreed this is the UPS customer's schedule and not all of Ameriflights fault, but since Ameriflight never has enough pilots to cover, the little vacation that you have accrued will be rejected. (is this even legal? Can they prohibit you indefinitely from taking vacation?) I don't know if it is legal, but even if you have vacation days built up, they will deny it. Anyway, you will show at the airport at 5:20AM and get back home at about 8PM to do it all the next morning. If they had more pilots, this schedule would be acceptable, but do it five to six days a week and you won't have a life. Even worse, at many places, Saturday morning you have to fly the plane somewhere for the weekend, than drive 3 hours home. Of course, you then start the work week on Monday with a 3 hour drive. So it is 60 plus work week with six hours of driving between flights. You can call fatigue, but of course that is an incident report and a black mark on your record.

I really regret the 18 months I sacrificed at this company. I met some decent people there and gained some good experience, but I wish I would have worked somewhere where I was appreciated and protected instead of being lied to and exploited. Being paid on time and being able to use vacation time I had would have been nice too!

Originally Posted by justfun

Are all 8 pilots CA hires?

Originally Posted by MinRest

Sounds like the company hasn't changed a bit unfortunately.

Originally Posted by own nav

And there were many who held on for the next "P2P." If that's going away, it's kind of a big deal.

Originally Posted by ZippyNH

The program was changed so that only pilots of typed airplanes get it.... remember when the program STARTED, the piper twin was still a "entry level" plane, now the be-99 is. The intent of the change seems encourage pilots move up rather than move on from the be-99.

Originally Posted by ZippyNH

The program was changed so that only pilots of typed airplanes get it.... remember when the program STARTED, the piper twin was still a "entry level" plane, now the be-99 is. The intent of the change seems encourage pilots move up rather than move on from the be-99.

Originally Posted by own nav

How much is P2P under this new change?

Originally Posted by FreightDogs

$10k/year
And can jump in at a pro-rated amount if you transition to type rated within the period.