Central Mountain Air

[snag]

What changes in those 15 months other than they are farther in debt and have a sore back?

You learn that the BE02/Dornier is not a 172 and you can't just fill the wing full of fuel, throw your grandmother in the back and go for a rip. You learn that the TopGun attitude you had in flightschool is no longer cool. You demonstrate your work ethic to management. You learn the procedures and inner workings of an airline. You get exposure to customer relations and customer service. You become familiar with the routes, schedule, clientelle, and real world aviation.

Does working the ramp suck? Yes. Could they hire you directly into the right seat? Yes, but why should they. Don't like it? Try Joe'sLeakyFloat Air Service in Podunk, NWT.

As far as CMA goes, Biggles pretty much covered it. The name of the game now is direct entry/fast upgrade captains (and I would not be surprised to see ads for the Dornier soon). I believe there's a bond for direct entry. 1 Year $10k, so you don't come for 2 months, slap the CMA badge on your resume and go to AC/WJ/Jazz. FO's start at $22.5, captains at $40k. This is somewhat flexible if you have more than minimum experience. See pilot pay websites for more info. Perdiems are up to $35 for a full days work, tax free.

The work is pretty easy. 1 or 2 day pairings. 19 days per month. You could work 3 hours in a day, or 14 hours, or sit on reserve, it counts the same. No loading, no planning, ILS to ILS, all IFR. Bid for pairings and days off according to seniority on a monthly basis. Flying is very by-the-book, safe, and strongly SOP oriented, so cowboys/non-conformists need not apply. All the crew are great to work with. No 120 hour months, more often from 30-80 with the odd person flying a 90 hour month. Passes with AC, WJ and some others.

Don't have to apply if that's not your kind of program.

[Cat Driver]

Does working the ramp suck? Yes. Could they hire you directly into the right seat? Yes, but why should they. Don't like it? Try Joe'sLeakyFloat Air Service in Podunk, NWT.

Why shouldn't they?

If the job is as idiot proof as you describe you should be able to take someone with a fresh license and MIFR.

Or is this an eletist position where image over rides ability?

[snag]

Why shouldn't they?

For all the reasons mentioned in the first paragraph of my post. Please read it again Cat.
Bottom line is with so many 250hr wonders applying its an easy way for the company to get the feel for an idividual. Plus they make for very good support staff. For every person that thinks they are too good to work there, there are 50 others sending their resumes in.

Or is this an eletist position where image over rides ability?

Don't know where you got this from. I didn't say 'idiot proof' either, otherwise your application wouldn't have been rejected. If it's about image, then all the airlines scooping up CMA pilots seem to like the picture. I repeat...Don't have to apply if that's not your kind of program.

Cat..Isn't there some "Why I hate Transport Canada" post you should be ranting on? As for me I'm done with this forum, so feel free to bore others with your wittiest reply.

[Cat Driver]

Cat..Isn't there some "Why I hate Transport Canada" post you should be ranting on? As for me I'm done with this forum, so feel free to bore others with your wittiest reply.

Seems I can't win here, if I comment on something besides TC I'm still annoying someone.

So here is my position on working the ramp.

If working the ramp has become a prerequsite for employment as a pilot why is there not a " working the ramp " training program taught by the flight schools so people wishing to fly for a living can get trained for the entry requirements?

My advice to pilots looking for a job flying is to find someone who will give you the opportunity to fly, not do manual labour on their ramp. If it's manual labour that you need to get ahead go get a job in the labour sector where you can earn a living.

I have not really paid all that much attention to how pilots get into flying for quite some time , but this working at manual labour thing to allow the employer a chance to examine your abilities and work ethics seems like a lame excuse to take advantage of young pilots trying to start a career flying.

But what the hell would I know about aviation?

[bcflyer]

What changes in those 15 months other than they are farther in debt and have a sore back?

You learn that the BE02/Dornier is not a 172 and you can't just fill the wing full of fuel, throw your grandmother in the back and go for a rip. You learn that the TopGun attitude you had in flightschool is no longer cool. You demonstrate your work ethic to management. You learn the procedures and inner workings of an airline. You get exposure to customer relations and customer service. You become familiar with the routes, schedule, clientelle, and real world aviation.

Does working the ramp suck? Yes. Could they hire you directly into the right seat? Yes, but why should they. Don't like it? Try Joe'sLeakyFloat Air Service in Podunk, NWT.

Hmmm Last time I checked the captain made the decisions on fuel, load etc not the 250hr guy beside them. Not everyone has the "Top Gun" attitude when they are starting out. As for the learning the procedures, inner workings of an airline and demonstrating your "work ethic" to management, thats a load of crap. You're saying that someone with 2000hrs of flying around on floats in Podunk NWT (no airline experience, no idea of the route structure or clientel and management certainly wouldn't know about their work ethic) would have to work the ramp for a year to learn all these mysical things? I highly doubt it. Its just another excuse to get slave labour out of guys desperate to go flying.

[xsbank]

Snag and his kind are full of sh*t. A week on the ramp and you're not actively being checked out? Blow.

Dispatchers and ramp workers make or break a company. If you have good ones you will make money and the operation will be smooth.

How do you get good people to work the ramp (or dispatch) for peanuts? Work long hours in a shit town for wages that won't feed you? You hire people way over-qualified and you promise them something they want. You get smart, motivated, ambitious people to work your ramp, you get very few accidents with your expensive machinery and you exploit the rampie 'til he is so p*ssed off he is going to quit, then you start 'checking him out' by throwing him in the right seat of a Navajo or a Van.

You are cheap labour, you are 'standing by' and you're making the operation run smoothly. Why doesn't this work? Because the owners exploit the hell out of the beginners. That's the only difference between walking in the door and getting checked out or waiting a year or two, 'til you are good and rusty and your licenses expire before they start to use you. Or the company goes bankrupt. Do you think CMA is so well-run and such a great company that they pay their captains $40K a year? The owners must be rolling in it or the company is standing right at the wall.

Where is it written that all aviation should be crap until you get to command a Boeing? Its not and it won't be if we just say NO.

Don't do it - just don't do it.

[Dave T]

People need to get a grip.
First low timers at many companies work the ramp, that's reality these days, it sucks but live with it.

Second while I don't thinking that working the ramp will make you a better pilot it will make you a better employee. Instead of the culture shock of a company, you just have the shock of flying. For someone with 250s this is enough lol. Depending on your job you'll know the flying, the destinations, the procedures, and the way the place is run ect.

On the side of the company they have time to decide if they want to invest money in training you or not. They have hundreds of 250 hr people apply. They pick some and give them a chance to see if they are a knob or not. Now some may be great on the ramp and suck in an airplane or vice versa, but generally you can get a feel for them. More importantly it is cheap labour for the company, why wouldn't they do it?

For a place like CMA minus all the cheap labour stuff. They generally want pilot's with more experience and they have no problem getting that. By having guys work the ramp they are saying normally we want more experience but we'll help you out if you help us out for awhile. That simple.

The ramp idea has good and bad parts to it. I don't think people should have to do it but folks need to calm down about it cause like it or not it's the norm these days.

end rant.

[Cat Driver]

xsbank, I really am amazed at what aviation has become for new pilots wanting to start a career.

However like any other issue in society all that is needed to make young pilots believe they must be cheated of a fair working wage as a ramp worker to make them happy to accept low wages as pilots is education....education as evident from a lot of the posts here where usery as a ramp worker is accepted as a right of passage to usery as a pilot.

Thankfully the mindset of employers was not like that when I started flying.

And for all you poor misguided victims of usery that think getting to sit right seat in a small airplane requires anything more than a license to do so and the ability to learn you have been had kids.

My very first job in aviation was aerial application in southern Ont. and my first hour being paid as a commercial pilot was spraying tobacco in small fields near St Thomas Ont.

The company gave me a 25 hour flying course and ground school at their expense and there was no such thing as any bond beyond our own acceptance of the job.

I had 252 hours total time when I was hired and believe me spraying tobacco in small fields is far more demanding than sitting in the right seat of a small twin flying a sked run.

So don't believe this crap that you have to bend over and be sodomized financially as proof you have the right stuff kids.

[rightseatwonder]

who in there right mind would work the ramp if you didn't have to...it is slave labour ...PERIOD...it has no bearing on work ethic etc...proven by the 5 to 1 rato of direct hires(regardless of their 1000 hrs) into the BE-02 to rampy upgrades. dont kid yourself guys and gals...its slave labour...but hey I did it too.

just be smart about it and work the ramp WHILE you are training ....don't wait until you are done your commercial THEN go rot somewhere....

[altiplano]

I heard CMA is moving salaries up - not to industry standard or where it should be, but better than what I have seen posted on these forums in the past.

[prelude]

And where did you hear this...

[xsbank]

I read this post and thought it made sense so I thought I would copy it and put it here. Then I realized that I wrote it! Yay!

"Snag and his kind are full of sh*t. A week on the ramp and you're not actively being checked out? Blow.

Dispatchers and ramp workers make or break a company. If you have good ones you will make money and the operation will be smooth.

How do you get good people to work the ramp (or dispatch) for peanuts? Work long hours in a shit town for wages that won't feed you? You hire people way over-qualified and you promise them something they want. You get smart, motivated, ambitious people to work your ramp, you get very few accidents with your expensive machinery and you exploit the rampie 'til he is so p*ssed off he is going to quit, then you start 'checking him out' by throwing him in the right seat of a Navajo or a Van.

You are cheap labour, you are 'standing by' and you're making the operation run smoothly. Why doesn't this work? Because the owners exploit the hell out of the beginners. That's the only difference between walking in the door and getting checked out or waiting a year or two, 'til you are good and rusty and your licenses expires before they start to use you. Or the company goes bankrupt. Do you think CMA is so well-run and such a great company that they pay their captains $40K a year? The owners must be rolling in it or the company is standing right at the wall.

Where is it written that all aviation should be crap until you get to command a Boeing? Its not and it won't be if we just say NO.

Don't do it - just don't do it."

There. Wasn't that good?

[AV8OR]

Why is it the "norm" to work the ramp?

[V1 Rotate]

Aviation is what pilots have made it. Especially those pilots that are willing to sacrifice all. For a job. Don't get me wrong, I love flying, and aviation as a whole but I would never do work that I did not want to do. In general pilots whine like prima ballerinas and do so about a job that really can't compare to anything out there.

[V1]

do you get your schedule in advance?
If you got another job you could plan around it?

[Kelowna Pilot]

You learn that the BE02/Dornier is not a 172 and you can't just fill the wing full of fuel, throw your grandmother in the back and go for a rip.

You mean there are people with CPL's who don't know this before starting on the ramp?

[prelude]

I heard CMA is moving salaries up - not to industry standard or where it should be, but better than what I have seen posted on these forums in the past.

I'm still curious where this information came from...

[altiplano]

It was more of a question than this "information" that you speak of... "information" can be tough to come by on avcanada sometimes...

But, what prompted the question - I heard a YYC 704 pilot who had been called for an interview mention the increase while justifying the possibility of the sideways step...

Is it true? I don't believe what I hear most of the time so just curious for some confirmation...

[pinkus]

Cat is right.

This whole ramp thing is a pile of junk. Everyone who had to do it to get in defends it because they cut their teeth doing it. Sadly those that did work the ramp to get on are helping the owners get away with sub standard wages.

Believing that someone else has to go through it to be just as much as a pilot as you is crap. We self perpetuate this by encouraging young pilots to take these jobs even when times are good. The market is so hot right now you can and will get a job flying if you look hard!

I respect those that have worked ramps to get into flying. But please, can't you put your chin out, swallow your own ego and admit that it degrades our chosen profession?

I have flown with top guns, people with horse shoes in their a** and hard working good pilots. The underlying personality of each pilot and their commitment to their job determine who they are in the cockpit. I don't look down on those that got a job flying with a fresh license.


As for CMA. It is not the place it once was. You can spend all that time trying to get on and then get on...working for horse s*** wages untill you make captain. Then, if you are lucky, you can thank management for hiring people directly into the left seat for MORE MONEY! You could spend 5 years there, and still make less than a guy/gal called in to be a direct entry.

[Lpsi]

You could spend 5 years there, and still make less than a guy/gal called in to be a direct entry.

A few things come to mind WRT this...

1st The Direct entry dude might/most likely, have paid their dues before in the same fashion.

2nd The direct entries didn't make the wage lower for the people that have been there 5 yrs+. Would appear as though the company knows that it could not attract the experience level it needs for the wage it offers at entry level. Therefore they are taking a calculated risk at offering someone new more money.

3rd The positions must have been available for junior qualified people to bid to or the Direct entry positions wouldn't become available. The company needs to keep on flying and if the fan stops so does paying the bills.

4th The willingness for the company to show a sign of "distress" by offering more money to Direct entry people than existing Captains within the organization should be an indicator that the time is coming due for a reality check WRT industry wages. This one is a coin toss. Does the tail wag the dog or visa versa. RE read point three re "the fan..."

5th IMHO Working the ramp should be for people who have never paid a penny toward getting a pilots license. That way when they see the "true operational picture" of flying they won't have the wasted the time and money on the dream of going from freshly minted Commercial pilot to hanger lurker unless the operational picture looked OK.

6th Some people work their way through all of the adversity and actually become very well rounded and interesting people to spend excessive amounts of time with on long over seas pairings. So I guess the system works... in a dysfunctional kind of way.

Cheers

keep working on your dream everyone.

[Alex YCV]

Old thread, but I can't resist a bump.

I them employers have found the "gimp" in the system. Throw a minimum TT number out there to set the standard (lets say 1000 hours). Play that number against the typical CPL license holder's hours (somewhere around 250TT), and play one against the other.

As long as nobody except the leaky float operators breaks ranks, the industry creates an amazing system for taking advantage of the newbies coming into the system: Sling bags, sweep floors, and generally grunt for a period of time, and then we will consider giving you some time in the right seat, where you can slowly build up time while still slinging bags 4 days a week.

In the end, it is a never ending source of cheap labor. I look at the pay rates people are talking about here, and the costs associated with many of the work locations (both financially and physical costs) and I have to say I am amazed.

I wonder what percentage of people get their CPL and then go get an office job pushing paper for 40k a year instead of ever making it into the right seat of anything that has a paycheck attached?

[. .]

What changes in those 15 months other than they are farther in debt and have a sore back?

You learn that the BE02/Dornier is not a 172 and you can't just fill the wing full of fuel, throw your grandmother in the back and go for a rip. .

Just put 2000lbs in the 1900 and you can't blow the ZFW. The rest of the weight and balance is easy. Are there many CMA trips that require more than 2000lbs?

[canpilot]

Cat et al. totally agree..

Hmm..

What have I learned on the ramp in 4 years.............


1) Bags are heavy.
2) Metal freight objects stickered with " heavy" are also heavy.
3) Marshalling in FUNNNNN!
4) Bags can become heavier when it rains.
5) When snow is on the ramp its F*&( cold!
6) when things fall off the beltloader they break! (usually)

This being said, it seems aweful tough to get a PIC job with a 7 hours on floats and a MIFR these days and 200TT. Or so I have been told (insurance companies).. Anyone care to correct me? I think insurance is part of the problem why many 200 hour wonders are running off to the ramp. And hence our current problem... (the proliferation of the ramp culture)

[Rowdy]

I love whoever it was that was extolling the virtues of CMA to try and make up for the fact that you make PEANUTS and if are hired with 250hrs.. you'll spend the good part of a decade workin your way up! And this is after humping bags or spending a year dispatching also at low wages.

I am NOT ragging on CMA.. I am not trying to argue. I'm more just dissapointed with aviation and pilots these days as a whole. There are no spines.. there seems to be no one woith a backbone. Complain complain complain! Come on kids! Lets grow up.

Give me a break. Best bet? Go get some PIC time.. spend a couple weeks on the dock and if you're good shit they'll check you out on the 180 or 185 and you'll be the beaver and otter pilots little bitch.. but hey! You'll make more then the guys at CMA or carson and you'll be getting PIC time. Which counts 1 for 1.. not like the half time credits for the A licence that sittin right seat gets ya.

I think they should start limiting the number of CPLs given out per year. Just enough to keep up with demand.. but not so many that it continues to flood the market and drop wages and cause bs like years on the ramp...


My last grumble.. a 1900 is nothing special.. Just a big King air!!

[buster79]

and how much money do you make, Mr. Rowdy?