Good company, fun job, people were great!
Pros
Great exposure to variety of aviation aspects. Formal, documented training. Company talks the talk by stressing safety, and walks the walk by educating their people on what to do and how to do it safely, with a bonus for doing so. Corporate team was rock-solid and professional, regional management likewise. Great benefits.
Cons
Only 3% max possible for annual pay increase, although managers could justify merit based increases. Annual pay increase is subject to your annual evaluation and base manager discretion, which may be a manager's way of using a non job-related event to mark down your job performance and avoid increasing your pay. Also, base manager can give unused percentage to other more deserving employees above the 3% limit, or they can withhold it from someone that deserves it because they think that person makes to much and give it to someone they know for a fact is going to quit soon. You have to watch out for unskilled and unprofessional base managers, unfortunately. Some can fool their bosses which forces employees into the horrible position of doing nothing or going up the chain to people the likely have never interacted with before. This is likely the primary con aspect to my experience with Atlantic. Maybe it's like this everywhere, but hopefully it was an isolated and anomalous experience. Base manager lacked technical line service experience and focused on profit margin and budget to the detriment of running a good operation. Constantly kept avoiding expenditures that affected customer service and operational safety, like ramp and hangar light bulb replacement, or tires for fuel trucks, or keeping fuel farm levels above minimum to avoid constant malfunction of floating suction. Meanwhile, regional and corporate management bent over backwards to say that if you need something, tell your manager. Further, the base manager was told by each of the supervisors about independent instances of insubordination from a single employee , and given express warning that it would lead to major problems in the workplace if not addressed. Then that employee was promoted to a management position over a more qualified applicant, which proved to be a complete failure since the best person for the job left due to the hostile environment created by the promotee. A couple of months later that newly promoted manager quit on the spot with no notice, walked out and left his co-workers to finish their shift without him. It appears as though the incentive to save money overpowered the responsibility to hire the best person. These may seem like petty grievances, and individually they are. However, they were discussed repeatedly, and the manager refused to accept input. Taken together, these events reveal an embarrassing level of inexperience, greed and incompetence. And this dynamic continued for two years. I understand that it has since changed, as well it should have, and much sooner. It's just a shame it took so long and that it was likely the reason that several good and promising people left.
