Best Company

[flyinhigh]

Every time a company is listed on this site they seem to get absolutely destroyed by negative comments. With that I want to see if something is even possible.

Can we make a list, and agree on it of the best company per province.

ie.
BC - Sonic Blue, ha. No Helijet
AB - North Caribou
etc etc.
these are examples as I actually have no idea of there working conditions


Just curious if a positive can come from this site.

[lownslow]

Airline management everywhere be like,

[iflyroads]

LMAO^^^

[cdnpilot77]

THAT'S A BINGO!

[lownslow]

Seriously though, how do you want to break this thing down? Overall best per province or further subdivided into 703/4/5, floats/wheels/schools to work at, entry hours, etc.?

[ahramin]

For BC I would say AC (old contract).

Then Jazz.

Then Harbour Air.

Then ... nobody, just be grateful you're living in BC.

I don't see how North Caribou could be tops in AB for 2 reasons. #1: Alberta Central Airways, and #2: Isn't North Caribou a BC company? I seem to remember leaving a lot of resumes in Fort St John.

['97 Tercel]

Airlines could be listed in any province because people commute from everywhere.

I'd say corporate flight depts probably take the cake in a lot of provinces.

What about the Territories? (Air North, Ursus of course, and First Air- though they're not Nunavut-based i suppose)

[Meatservo]

In my opinion the only way the word "best" could be applied universally rather than subjectively would be to take a look at how well compensated the senior non-management employees are. In terms of what kind of life they can expect to live, on average, upon retirement, should they choose to remain at that company until that time. Presuming that while they worked there they continued to seek every opportunity to advance to better-paying positions.

If the music stopped right now, and everyone stayed at the company they are presently with until retirement, the ones who fare the best after retirement will be the ones who will turn out to have been at the "best" company. And I re-iterate: non-management. We already know that management employees and their friends will do what is best for themselves, whether the company is the "best" or the "worst". Therefore they aren't germane to this discussion. How do the rest of the employees make out?

That's my opinion.

[complexintentions]

Hmm. I actually think your criteria is very sensible but...

1. Does it assume one retires IN Canada? (You can certainly find much less expensive places to do so.)

2. Does it assume one retires at a specific age? (A job that allows you to retire at 45 instead of 65 sure seems like the better job to me!)

3. Does if consider QOL until one retires? (If a job totally sucks, does it matter how much it pays?)

Depending on the variables, the very best job using retirement, if the goal is to amass enough to enjoy it early/comfortably/securely, as the main criteria...may very well not even be in Canada.

Such is the economic reality of wage growth being outpaced by inflation for decades (led by housing costs), and the disappearance of indexed pensions outside of government jobs. (and maybe a few crusty AC guys who'll die shortly after they retire anyway because they kept flying two such an advanced age )

According to the statistics, for most people, their entire net retirement worth will be CPP/OAP and their house. Which may or may not be paid off by the time they retire. Apparently for something like 70% of Canadians their retirement plan is to win the lottery. I kid you not.

[Meatservo]

Yes I suppose there should be some definitions. You can certainly have a better quality of life in a cheap country if you think you would be happy there. But that goes for everyone. Whether the job sucks or not is completely subjective. Someone who is passionate about bush-flying, for instance, might think his job sucks if he has to fly an airliner to make ends meet. But I would argue in that case, even if he loved what he was doing, it was the bush-flying job that sucked, because it didn't pay him well enough to make him want to stick around. Conversely, I would love to fly a water-bomber. If I started now, I could conceivably retire with a very generous six-figure annual income and only have to work four months a year. But I love to fly. I would miss flying during those other months, so it's not the career for me. I have no doubt however that if I decided to go for it anyway, I'd be better off when I retired in twenty years or so. And I'm comfortable admitting that I think Conair (for example) is a "better" company to work for than the one I work for right now, and I will likely suffer in twenty years for not having gone to a better company when I had the chance, simply because I 'like" what I'm doing now. So no, I don't think whether you like your job or not has much to do with whether or not the company is "better". I still think that has purely to do with money and benefits. And safety I guess. I don't have a lot of experience with companies that are actually unsafe, so it took me a while to think of this but safety is definitely one of the things that makes a company "better". And I'm not talking about baloney pretend safety like SMS and hi-viz vests and online recurrent-training videos and all that hocus-pocus. I'm talking about whether they spend the money to fix the 'planes, and the pilots (and the engineers!!) are getting enough rest, and whether they do high-quality real-world training with good instructors. You know, I'm talking about actually being safe.

[JoeShmoe]

I think the only way your actually gonna get a clear answer is if you make a forum for each province, and have a survey with every company listed in that province, and have us all vote. Maybe have it so you could vote for 3 companies in each province. It would be a lot of work to put together, but would be very interesting to see the results, and would maybe even convince some of the lower companies on the list to improve?

[co-joe]

I'll second ahramin, Alberta Central Airways is the best company and Wendle Umble is the best person I've ever worked for. They're just not big enough for more than a few people to get their start and move up, plus the big W is good at figuring out how to treat people so that they stick around therefore little movement.

That leads us to the ironic part about the "best company" title. The best company for an aspiring airline pilot would be somewhere that flies a tonne, has a step ladder fleet, and treats people like shite so movement is always quick, but they must not be bound by "contrails" BS and training bonds are affordable so people can move on easily.

[g5]

For BC I would say AC (old contract).

Then Jazz.

Then Harbour Air.

Then ... nobody, just be grateful you're living in BC.

I don't see how North Caribou could be tops in AB for 2 reasons. #1: Alberta Central Airways, and #2: Isn't North Caribou a BC company? I seem to remember leaving a lot of resumes in Fort St John.

Isn't AC a Québecois company?

[schnitzel2k3]

Divide Canada up into regions. North, West, Central, East.

North = Yukon, NWT, and Nunavut
West = British Columbia and Alberta
Central = Saskatchewan and Manitoba
East = Ontario, Quebec, Maritimes

Categorize jobs under long term employees remaining +2 years, not due to lack of industry movement.

Good work, life and salary balance plus retirement.

Any company can be at the top of the each region in more than one region (I.e Jazz, Encore whatever) could be West and East.

Try and vote based on non commuting positions for the region. Encore and Jazz =\= Central

Label top 5 in each region.

North: ? / ? / ? / ? / ?
West: AC / Jazz / Air Sprint / ? / ?
Central: Westwind / Missinipi / Skylink / ? / ?
East: AC / Jazz / Skyregional / Air Sprint / ?

I've got a bunch of airlines listed there, but there are lots and lots of companies that are not included that should be, but for the life of me can't seem to remember (lots of charter where pilots can hang their hats). Let's get to the voting.

S.

[NotDirty!]

The best company is obviously the one who's ops manager has a copy of Michael Scott's "Somehow I Manage" on his office bookshelf.

[180]

There's way to many variables that come into play.

It's like voting best looking girl. Some guys like blondes, others prefer brunettes, some like petite, some like curvy, some like white, some like Asian, etc etc etc.

Even when you narrow it down to something finite like Provincially by best schedule, some people like to be home at night, some people like pairings with weekends off, some people like rotational work that gives then weeks off in a row, etc. Then, some people like big cities, some people like the country, blah blah blah.

There's just way too many variables. What's best for one is probably someone else's nightmare.

[leftoftrack]

You forgot the fire snatch option..........wait, nobody like gingers