Yeah, I would definitely still take the offer, but if you don't mind me asking, what did you not like about working there Manniax?
Let's see - where do I begin. The CEO seemed to us to be a cheapskate who didn't care about our department at all until we threatened to go union. When we moved from FMN to PHX, he cut the starting pay for new hires by several thousand dollars, and there was a period where some new hires weren't getting a regular salary until they were signed off to work by themselves, although I think this practice has since ended - at least I hope so.
Instead of hiring people with experience in dispatch departments to manage the SOC, he would promote people in from the flight department or maintenance or other places that were his flunkies. Nobody seemed to care about workload. There were never enough crews, the crews were always unhappy, and there were always maintenance problems. There wasn't any set pay scale for dispatch. While I was there, overtime was not paid at time and half but rather as straight time (although I think they may have since changed this.) Due to being skimpy on having enough flight crews and so forth, reliability was not that great, annoying the major code share partners...
I understand everyone needs to get job experience somewhere - I just didn't like working there much. In some ways, it actually IS good experience, because you get a lot of stuff thrown at you right away. And Phoenix is a nice place to live if you can stand the summer heat. But if you get the offer and want to take it, I would advise just using it as a stepping stone to a better regional - plan on staying a year or so and then moving on. Then after you get some experience at the better regional, move on to the majors. Which regionals are better? Pretty much anyone (other than Pinnacle, which I hear is also fairly messed up - but at least there, you have the benefit of a union contract to help protect you from management abuses.)
As I said, things may have changed some since I was there - but based on what I have heard from people who worked there since I left, I don't think there have been any dramatic improvements either. And whatever you decide to do, I wish you the best of luck with your aviation career.
See my reply to your question addressed above.
