A little closer to home

Last week, I was sitting in a meeting at work here in Phoenix. Prior to arriving at the meeting, i had heard rumors about some drastic changes taking place within the company, but nothing as big as the one that I was about to be struck with. Here's some background:

I moved my little family out to Phoenix, AZ in July of 2008 to work at a promising flight training academy. I learned about the job online on one of those "so you're still eating ramen noodles.com" websites for pilots looking for greener pastures. I was working at a prominent flight school in Utah as a CFI where I was on duty about six hours a day and only got paid for 3. For those of you who are or who were CFIs you know how this works. You show up twenty minutes before your first student arrives to ensure that your lesson is ready and that the airplane that you had scheduled wasn't down for maintenance. Then your phone rings, its your student, he's sick... again and cant make the lesson. A funny thing typically happens during flight training- a friendship develops between the CFI and his student. I was one of those soft instructors who just couldn't bear the thought of telling my friend/student/college buddy that I just charged him the full $60 for my time and the $300 no-show for the airplane time for his failure to give 24 hours cancellation notice. So I lost money. I lost time. I sat around at the airport studying my Jeppesen Airway Manual and finger-flying approaches. I had to get a second job as a lineman fueling airplanes, sweeping, mopping, answering phones, invoicing flights, and being a general company lackey that did whatever the boss needed, even construction work at the airport, whatever I could to fill in the gaps caused by an array of unreliable students, maintenance, and weather cancellations. I earned more working for $9 an hour as a lineman than I did as a part time CFI.

Let me say that another way, just to make sure this is clear. I earned more at the job where the only requirement was to be warm-blooded, than I did working as a CFI which cost me over $50,000 in tuition and training to become certified.

So naturally, I was constantly screening the internet looking for jobs that paid more and offered a steady stream of students. I thought I had found what I was looking for in Phoenix, so I agreed to an interview. The voice on the phone promised a large multi-engine fleet, state-of-the-art Cirrus airplanes as their primary single engine trainer, and to top it off, a large starting salary! At the interview, I asked my interviewer, who would later be my boss, if I could make my own schedule. He said yes, as long as your students progress, you can work whatever hours you like. That was excellent news, I'd finally work for a company that evaluated me not based on the hours at work, but on the progress of my students. I agreed to take the job.

I'm not sure how it came up during the first week of orientation, but one of the other new hires asked our instructor when we would get paid. Training was two weeks long and we had rent coming due. The instructor looked surprised, saying "Oh, didn't they tell you in your interviews that training was not paid?" we all shook our heads. It would be a month until we would get our first paychecks, meanwhile, I had to withdraw money from a retirement fund just to eat and fill up my tank. Towards the end of the 2-week orientation, the instructors told us where we could get our uniforms, and how much they would cost. Another hand went up "Wait a second, isnt the company going to pay for our uniforms?" "No," the instructor said "the company only lends you your epaulets and the company insignia, both of which must be returned when you terminate your employment with us." Luckily, I still had my pilot shirt from my prior CFI job and avoided the brunt of those costs, but I did have to buy the tie. "When are we going to get our standardization flights in the Cirrus?" I asked. The instructor shook his head and said we haven't flown the Cirruses in months. We train all our private pilot students in the '152s and the instrument students fly the '172s." Someone else asked when we declare what days off we wanted, the instructor said that our days off were decided by a seniority bid. So much for making our own schedule. We were flabbergasted at this information that had somehow lost its way to us during the hiring process, but no matter, we still had the promise of a handsome salary, and that was enough to make us shrug off the disillusionment.

It wasnt long after I started that the company began further restricting our ability to make our own schedules. As a CFII, I was training only instrument students, and word came down from the top that in order to get maximum utilization out of the fleet, we were no longer able to fly in the mornings, and had to begin all our flights at 1pm. Have you ever been in Phoenix, AZ in august at 2pm? The soles of your shoes melt to the tarmac, and thats no joke. Later, they restricted our launch times to after 3pm, putting me home anywhere between 9pm and sometimes midnight. I never got to see my wife because hers was a daytime schedule. We only saw each other when we were walking in or out the door, or when one of us was already in bed asleep. We moved down here because of the prospect of me making my schedule to match hers so that we could balance it all out and still get to spend time together. So we made the best of it and I found little ways to work my schedule to get me home at semi-decent times while still ensuring that the students progressed in a timely manner.

Then came last week's meeting... I found a spot in the back with another CFI who had come down with me from Utah and took a seat next to him. The meeting started off with the good news... CFI of the month, company news, etc. Then came the whopper. The Chief of Training stood and spoke for about ten minutes about how the company would never sabotage us, nor would he ever want to be in a position to take anything away from us. After buttering us up for a bit, he let it loose: "Effective Monday, we are canceling all your salaries and moving to an hourly wage system, furthermore, management is taking control of your schedules, so you will not be able to schedule yourselves. Scheduling will be on a seniority bid system and you will be slated to fly according to the company's need... day or night.... 24 hours a day."

You could have cut the tension in the room with a knife as he detailed the rest of the changes. Here were sixty CFI's who had moved from all over the country, spending thousands on their moving expenses in response to this company's promises of everything that a CFI could ever want, only to be told that they should have just stayed home. Hands went up, angry comments were made, afterwards CFIs quit on the spot. Malicious emails were disseminated throughout the company's email. Worse yet, I had to go home and tell my wife that our hopes of synchronizing our schedules were lost. And that I had no guarantee that I would get to see her much at all. I can't move back to Utah, because the move is too expensive, plus I'd have to reimburse this company for the $500 moving allowance it gave me to come down, and I have a year lease on my apartment that I cant get out of without paying huge severance fees. Looks like we're staying here and riding it out, it's the best chance we've got.

That was the only company meeting that I had been to where the owner of the academy failed to be present.