* I know this sounds silly, but I think many of the problems at Atlas can be brought down to one word, and that one word is "pride" - from the top down to the bottom. This company has an incredible amount to be proud of. We're a one-of-a-kind company, highly successful at what we do, so be proud of that, treat your employees with pride, welcome new employees to the company with open arms, build your employees up rather than break them down. It's not hard at all. It's time to revisit lessons from Management 101.
* There seems to be an overall general level of discontentment within the pilot corps. Pilots are constantly leaving to go fly for other companies. Yet the company doesn't care and they have the mentality of "we have 10,000 applications on file, we'll just hire other pilots to replace you" - guess what, 9,800 of those pilots have already been hired elsewhere! Another managerial pet phrase "if you don't like it here then go fly elsewhere". NO! I don't want to go fly elsewhere, I want things to get better here at Atlas to make good, high-quality pilots not want pack their bags to go fly elsewhere. It's not just about hiring pilots, it's all about hiring AND retaining them. Stop looking at the tangibles of training expenses and paybacks before pilots go elsewhere and start looking at the intangibles such as what good solid experience within our pilot corps will do towards the overall betterment of our company or solve a specific problem that less experience wouldn't be able to do. The company seems to be in denial about a serious problem when it comes up to pilot retention. Their mentality is that if a pilot works for just two months then they've already paid off their own training expenses due to the revenue made off of them and at that point are expendable. Hey Atlas, wouldn't you rather make $15M in revenue from an employee who works for you for 30 years rather than just $50K from an employee, merely paying off their training expenses, after working for you for only two months and then going to another carrier? As a pilot group we're not asking for much; just a little appreciation and compensation that's comparable to our counterparts at the legacy airlines. You need to hire AND retain good pilots. How do you retain? Simple, make people want to stay by making conditions comparable with what they would have elsewhere so that they no longer want to go to that elsewhere, wherever it may be.
* Breakfast grievance - very simple solution, allow employees to keep their hotel points/stay credits. At my last company, when you showed up on day one of indoctrination, you are an automatic Hilton Diamond member - even before you've ever spent a night in a Hilton hotel for the company. How did my last company do this? Simple, they form solid relationships with other companies; a little networking goes a long ways. So while Hilton gave my last company discounts that Atlas doesn't even come close to approaching, employees at my last company had the red carpet rolled out for them every time they checked in. It was an incredibly mutually beneficial relationship! Instead, our company relegates itself to playing "musical hotels", ridiculously unable to maintain hotel contracts before having to look elsewhere. Anyway, getting back to the breakfast grievance, once pilot employees make status within the various hotel chains their breakfasts are then included for free. This would eliminate the breakfast grievance. So there you go - problem solved, both parties happy, money saved!
* Not being paid while on R1. Are you serious?!? Are you kidding me?!? This is the absolute most absurd thing with any aviation company within the entire industry. If the company sits me on R1 during my pattern then I don't get paid for those days. A pilot could very easily be involuntarily assigned 17 days of R1 and not be paid a single dime of wages for the entire month.
* Aircraft wage differences. Atlas is hurting itself by doing this. Once the 767 seat locks are up the vast majority will go to the 747 which will cost $50K for training plus two months of completely lost productivity not to mention IOE. Think about how many pilots wouldn't transition from the 767 to the 747 if their wages were the same - tons of them! Making the wages the same would eliminate the training and lost productivity expenses when a 767 pilot begins 747 training because many, many pilots would stay in the 767 if the wages were the same.
* A travel bank would be mutually beneficial. So far this year I have saved Atlas $6,849 this year by catching travel department mistakes as well as by finding more economical flights to travel on. And the year isn't over with yet. So how about putting that into a travel bank, one that I can draw into at any point but at the end of the year you get half and I get half. Again, this would be a mutually beneficial perk. Other pilots would begin looking for savings just the same way that I do. If every pilot finished the year with $6,849 in their travel bank then Atlas would make over $3.5M in pure additional profit.
* AQP. Come on Atlas, get going with it already. Legacy carriers have been doing this for years and years now. It's time for you to get caught up to the times!
