Pros
Their safety program has been historically great. This is a wonderful place for pilots, they treat them well and have a low turn around.
Cons
I had taken a large pay cut to come work for this company from another flight company. We all went through the same orientation. We were told how important we are to the company. We were told that the schedule was designed to keep the best mental health for our staff and to keep our home lives good. We were told that we needed to take care of ourselves. That there was an open door policy. I drank up the koolaid. I got to my rural base and found much of the culture that was talked about at orientation was not reflective of my base. The base managers were very vocal about the reluctance to pick up over time. The nurses were looked down on, with reasons of just being a nurse. The managers only prized an ethic of working as much overtime as possible. I tried to look at it as an exclusive base issue. September of 2017 came along. We were told a wage adjustment would take place. They wanted to grow the business after the other half of PHI (oil/petroleum) took a multimillion dollar hit. The plan: open more bases, decrease the number of staff at each base and increase our hourly work load to adjust for less staff. They used the term transparency often. But they would not give out any information regarding pay and told us that a matrix book would be sent in the mail to explain our wage increase. I was all ready aware that our company was not paying competitive wages for our geographical location. Flight is a tight community. Our base was hopeful we would finally be compensated. The tenured staff disclosed to us they have not had a raise or cost of living adjustments in years. That was a huge red flag what was about to come was not going to be as hopeful or transparent. In October: The entire medical staff received an hourly pay cut. They added 630 more hours to our schedule for the year, mandatory. They used the added shifts to essentially hide the hourly wage decrease. Which is NOT transparency. And when they staff quickly caught on, the highest management became adverse to any questions. This was so far from the beautiful speech we had received about open door policy, about employee's mental health being a priority. Since this whole change, my region has lost 50% of its nursing staff and about 20% of its paramedics. The base I had worked for struggles with getting nurse applicants and the paramedics turn down the job after they see the pay and schedule offered. There was a urgent meeting with the president of the company about our region's personal issues. The president refused to admit the real problem and to try to fix this. Our base started offering pay incentives for people who worked extra shifts. The staff is exhausted and the all ready low morale is depleted. Final thing for nurses: they do not promote nurses. Only paramedics. If you want a company for advancement, this is not for you.
