Ameriflight

Why do they stay? Because they can't move on, it is quite simple. Either their brains are fried from flying freight too long, or they have something on their record preventing them from moving on. Maybe you are wired to love it, in which case it will work out for you. I am not super fond of AMF for the way I was treated there but that had more to do with the base and base manager than the company as a whole. With that said mx is pretty horrible at best, the schedules are fair to horrendous, the equipment is terrible.

If you love the bush, go fly in the bush, you don't need AMF for that.
Yeah but they have a pretty cool instagram.
 
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They couldn't have paid me enough to be an ACP (or Base Supervisor Pilot as they call it now...) there....Some people felt it gave them some sort of "status" boost or some crap....Lol! is all I have to say to that. I was able to check off the training captain box, which I am thankful for, but it certaintly didn't warrant keeping me there and probably could have been a checkairman if I stuck around and pushed for it....but I didn't want to stay. Simple as that.

Yea that is for sure the snapshot of the typical AMF pilot now. When I was there if you stayed 4 years you had some titles. I wanted to do CA but left before I could.
 
Given the climate of the economy now, and how it has been for the last 5 years. I can't imagine a single individual there now that would be at NetJets still, and not have a screw loose. The old guard that stayed 4-8 years was because the industry fell flat on its face. If there are guys there now that have been there 5-10 years they have either bought into the MASSIVE hype machine that seems to surround AMF, or they have issues getting hired somewhere else.
Believe you may be missing another entire level of what makes the world turn for folks in aviation. Much of your comparison isn't as simply quantifiable as you make it seem. Tearing down someone's choice to haul rubber dog • and using the hauling of the one-percent as comparison lacks awareness. And as Baj mentioned, the schedules alone can work for folks.....it worked for me. One leg in the am and one at night plus a full night's sleep allowed me do other things much more important than flying a Citation X coast to coast. Then flying a Citation X coast to coast again in the same day. Hell, even Warren Buffet doesn't like NetJets that much.

Then again I once flew Jack Nicklaus out of a hunting lodge in Alaska and upon meeting up with his G-IV thought, "Now that's a flying job." But not NetJets.
 
Yea that is for sure the snapshot of the typical AMF pilot now. When I was there if you stayed 4 years you had some titles. I wanted to do CA but left before I could.
I was asked by someone what my interest level in being a PA31 checkairman was months after I had transitioned to the 99...One of my main reasons for not jumping at it was my lack of desire to re learn that god forsaken gear system to the engineering level that AMF demanded. Plus I already had a foot out the door at that point and unlike some guys there, I actually cared about costing a company a bunch of $$ in training resouces only to bail on them a month or two later.
 
I was asked by someone what my interest level in being a PA31 checkairman was months after I had transitioned to the 99...One of my main reasons for not jumping at it was my lack of desire to re learn that god forsaken gear system to the engineering level that AMF demanded. Plus I already had a foot out the door at that point and unlike some guys there, I actually cared about costing a company a bunch of $$ in training resouces only to bail on them a month or two later.
I've flown and managed maintenance on a PA31 for 5 years and I don't think I could pass AMF Navajo training. Also I don't get the hate for the gear system, it's a very solid system with just a very few gotchas that can easily be circumvented by preventive maintenance. You just run it until something breaks and you'll have problems (I've learned that the hard way) but that applies to anything mechanical.
 
. Hell, even Warren Buffet doesn't like NetJets that much.

Interesting considering he bought he company because his wife loves traveling on NetJets so much. I have a class date somewhere else and I am giving notice there so bashing NetJets doesn't hurt my feelings, but I do find it hilarious for a wet ticket commercial pilot (not you) to try and defend AMF by comparing it to NetJets.

I would love to be proven wrong. Show me a guy who made a choice to have a career at AMF as some sort of pilot or lower management that doesn't have a tattered past or isn't a weirdo. I'd love to meet him/her.
 
I've flown and managed maintenance on a PA31 for 5 years and I don't think I could pass AMF Navajo training. Also I don't get the hate for the gear system, it's a very solid system with just a very few gotchas that can easily be circumvented by preventive maintenance. You just run it until something breaks and you'll have problems (I've learned that the hard way) but that applies to anything mechanical.

I fly a Chieftain a bit part 91 and it's a real joy to fly it ummm, normally...
 
I was asked by someone what my interest level in being a PA31 checkairman was months after I had transitioned to the 99...One of my main reasons for not jumping at it was my lack of desire to re learn that god forsaken gear system to the engineering level that AMF demanded. Plus I already had a foot out the door at that point and unlike some guys there, I actually cared about costing a company a bunch of $$ in training resouces only to bail on them a month or two later.

Well it's absolutely no secret at all on how vocal I've been on this forum regarding the "training" department. One thing I really hope they cleared up is the assumption you need an A&P level of knowledge on every system when most of it is irrelevant to a pilot.
 
I fly a Chieftain a bit part 91 and it's a real joy to fly it ummm, normally...
I do lol a little bit that as of 2016 the biggest remaining chieftain operator in the world (probably) is still having problems with hyd filter bowls cracking. Like cmon guys, put a life limit on that shizzle like Warbelows did.
 
I know this varied by base but one area that AMF used to really score an F in was MX. Chieftains and 99s were really bad. The culture in BUR made it so bad that they would go through mechanics pretty frequently (again if they weren't oddballs of felons, yes we had both lol) and one thing that was echoed was preventative MX. At least on the west coast, preventative MX was not going to happen. Hell, when I was there they would suspend you if left and airplane at the end of the day, and the next guy in the morning had a preflight issue. Even for the nav bulb really did burn out as soon as it was flipped on in the morning. Getting them to change anything before it broke, stopped working, cracked, caught fire, leaked or exploded was really hard.
 
I know this varied by base but one area that AMF used to really score an F in was MX. Chieftains and 99s were really bad. The culture in BUR made it so bad that they would go through mechanics pretty frequently (again if they weren't oddballs of felons, yes we had both lol) and one thing that was echoed was preventative MX. At least on the west coast, preventative MX was not going to happen. Hell, when I was there they would suspend you if left and airplane at the end of the day, and the next guy in the morning had a preflight issue. Even for the nav bulb really did burn out as soon as it was flipped on in the morning. Getting them to change anything before it broke, stopped working, cracked, caught fire, leaked or exploded was really hard.
I'm not going to cast toooo many stones, because we've had our share of stupid stuff (shoot, some of it I've even been involved in) in 7 years/4000 hours of running a chieftain, but the thing is we've learned from them and put in processes to improve uptime (even if it means that scheduled mx visits are more labor intensive). You would think that a company the size of Amflight with that level of experience operating the airplane would have it down to a science. Tim at Warbelows certainly does.
 
Well it's absolutely no secret at all on how vocal I've been on this forum regarding the "training" department. One thing I really hope they cleared up is the assumption you need an A&P level of knowledge on every system when most of it is irrelevant to a pilot.
They're not quite there yet....The detailed descriptions they require of each system are still absured and it's almost counterproductive in the sense that it encourages rote memorization of the spiel in the systems packet as opposed to having a solid/practical understanding of each system from a pilot's perspective. For example: The same PT6 FCU we spent hours at AMF talking about what each valve did and all the lovely varieties of air that went through it was pretty much referred to as the "PFM box" during C90 systems ground at my current shop.
 
I've flown and managed maintenance on a PA31 for 5 years and I don't think I could pass AMF Navajo training. Also I don't get the hate for the gear system, it's a very solid system with just a very few gotchas that can easily be circumvented by preventive maintenance. You just run it until something breaks and you'll have problems (I've learned that the hard way) but that applies to anything mechanical.
You just said AMF and preventive MX in the same paragraph...LOL
 
Maybe I'm crazy, but that seems like shooting themselves in the foot. And I say that from the perspective of someone who's a pilot, mechanic, and manager.
I'd say the condition of the planes is the main pitfalll at AMF these days along with the schedule (not really their fault though...feeder freight just sucks schedule wise IMHO)....Pay has improved dramatically (I took a more than $10K per year raise in my 1.5 years there), working conditions are way better and the bonuses they've come out with are no laughing matter....yet people still bail before they've even put in a year. I for one was sick of flying beat to crap airplanes after more than 2500 hours of doing so as a CFI and freight dog and the schedule wore me down (I hated the daytime layover and crazy early show time...), so I bailed even though I had plenty of opportunity to move up in the company had I stayed and would've made good money doing so.
 
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