Well folks, got the call yesterday from thunder.
I was just wondering what this company is like, I am not looking for any Bullshit, I want to know from the guys and gals that have and do work there what they think of it..
Thunder Airlines!!
Moderators: North Shore, sky's the limit, sepia, Sulako, lilfssister, I WAS Birddog
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sprucemonkey
- Rank 8
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AEROMONKEY
- Rank 5
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- Joined: Wed Jul 13, 2005 7:19 pm
- Location: Thunder Bay
SEEMS PRETTY GOOD TO ME
Seems like thunders pilots get treated pretty good.....I've been fueling them for almost 7 years and still see the same pilots day in day out. Although that Francis guy 
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the original tony
- Rank 4
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- Joined: Tue Jun 28, 2005 8:18 pm
mackie on a good day
mackie on a bad day
i worked there for a long time, and i just stayed clear of management.
which is hard being based in YQT but it worked, i think
like most operations, as for the guys getting treated well,well, not that well.
just ask some of the guys/gals that are there now, or were there.
keep your nose clean, shut the hell up and fly. no problems. argue and you are F*&$ED
best of luck with the interview/gnd school, if you get on the MOOTWO, no slower than 130-140 on short final.
she be a bugger to land slow, fast, or in general.[quote]
remember, people don't plan to fail, the fail to plan[/quote]
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sprucemonkey
- Rank 8
- Posts: 773
- Joined: Thu Feb 19, 2004 10:31 pm
What aircraft?
Here's a testimonial you may find helpful:
------------------------------------
" I started at Thunder in spring 2003, on the MU-2. The plane is like nothing you will ever fly again, so be prepared for a serious ego bruising. Once you get past that, here's the lifestyle down-lo:
For the MU-2, it's a $4,000 bond for F/o. You pay them, and once you pass your ride they pay you back over 24 months. If you are going to be on the MU-2, you should put in as many hours of studying the manuals as you possibly can before you start your groundschool. It's the most thorough groundschool you will ever go through, and you will be expected to remember truly arcane details about the aircraft. Even if you take this to heart, you will be overwhelmed by the information presented to you; only some of it is actually relevant to your life but that doesn't matter. That being said, the MU-2 training captain is a truly nice person who could probably build her own MU-2 from scratch. The trouble is, she expects you to be able to do so also.
You fly medevacs. Your schedule works out to 2 days on-call for every day off, usually 10 on and 5 off, or 8 on and 4 off. Some bases have you going Monday to Friday with weekends off. You usually will be on-call from 11pm the night before your days on until 11pm the night of your days off. If you get called at 10:58pm on your last night, you will be expected to fly a full 15 hour day. You will not be paid overtime, nor will you be paid for working on stat holidays. If you get called in on your days off, you may be paid a little extra, but the deal seems to vary from person to person.
You are expected to arrive at the airport roughly 20 minutes after your pager goes off, and to be airborne in 60 minutes. Think hard about what that means. You will be in the middle of grocery shopping or a movie or a haircut, and you will have to drop everything and go. Keep a set of work clothes in your car, and keep a lunch ready. If you haven't been paged out by 3pm, have a two-hour nap or you will be pooched when the pager goes off at 10pm and you fly straight until 1pm the following afternoon.
Your first year, you will make 24,000 per year, with $2 meal allowance for each hour on duty, and $7 for each hour's detention time away from base, past the first hour. If you land somewhere and wait for 59 minutes before your patient is loaded, you get nothing. If you wait for 90 minutes, you get 30 minutes detention.
After a year's service, you will start to be paid mileage. 2 cents a mile for your first year up to 10 cents a mile after 5 years as f/o. As far as I know, noone has been there longer than a couple of years without being offered an upgrade to captain.
As captain, will will get 10 cents a mile your first year, up to 20 cents a mile after 5. You will also get $15/hour detention instead of $7. The upgrade to captain on the MU-2 will cost you $10,000 and they will pay it back over 2 years from the start of your upgrade. If they still owe you money from your f/o bond, it will be credited toward your captain's upgrade. You'd better make sure you have a rich uncle or a good credit rating, as there is no way you will be able to save the $10k from your f/o's paycheque.
In real life as an f/o, that works out to about $900 - 1000 takehome every two weeks. Keep in mind that around $85 of that is your own money, paid back to you outta your $4,000.
Dispatch is nice; one of them is truly stellar and I don't know about any of the other current ones; they have since quit.
The maintenance is good. They fix broken planes, and the mechanics care about doing a good job. If you are lucky enough to be posted to Sudbury, you will work with one of the finest mechanics alive.
You will not be pressured to bust minimums; the MOH pays for the flight whether or not you make it in. That being said, there is pressure to attempt flights even when there is no realistic chance of successfully landing.
You may be expected to move from one base to another, or even from one aircraft type to another. No big deal there, unless you have a family or don't like moving every few months.
Managment - overall they are typical, but best viewed from a great distance (The CP may or may not have 'issues' with control). Don't fool yourself into thinking you will receive support from them if you screw up, or if you cost them money. You are expected to give your heart and soul, and in return you get a regular paycheque and around 700 hours a year of multi-turbine. You will never hear a word about what a good job you are doing, but rest assured if you make a mistake you will hear about it immediately. Management tends to use the stick rather than the carrot; then again most operators do.
The medics are generally really good to work with, though you may grow resentful of their work schedules and pay, which will be roughly half of your work schedule, and twice your pay. The actual people are great though.
This next part is a little more personal, but you still may find it helpful, I dunno..
I was dismissed from Thunder when my time to go captain came and I informed them I didn't have $10k to spare, and that I didn't want to move back to another base (Timmins, widely regarded at the time as the worst base, and where I had just moved from), my fourth move for Thunder in 18 months.
During this time I had a few emails back and forth from the chief pilot (which I kept, of course - PM Sulako if you want a copy of them
) explaining that I didn't want to lose my job, but he held fast to his position that I wasn't playing by the rules of the agreement I signed when I asked that I not be transferred to Timmins. He may have ended up being flexible on the 10k bond; it's happened in the past when they have been jammed for captains - they pay the 10k and then just threaten to sue you if you leave before your 24 months are up. We never got to that stage though. I knew I was done when I told him I didn't want to move again, it was just a question of when. It's unfortunate as other pilots had declined moves without being let go, but you will find out soon enough that there are different deals for different people - politics is king there and I admit I didn't play the game very well.
'When' turned out to be 2 weeks after my last email from him when he said "I will not discuss this matter any further".
The way they did it was interesting; I got the phone call after a day's flying, telling me to leave my keys and pager in the office, and that they were parking the MU-2 and transferring both base captains to the King Air. The very next day, management told the captains that they were keeping the MU-2, but they still 'laid me off' and replaced me with an f/o from another base. A quick word with employment standards in Ottawa told me that wasn't kosher, but it was clear that I was no longer welcome and I chose not to fight the issue.
Since then I have gone on to a much better situation, so that kinda worked out in the end. I have tried to be honest and impartial, but parts of this are still only my opinion, so take my words with a healthy dose of skepticism. After all, they essentially fired me (though they were kind enough to mark it "laid off" on my severance form) so I could be harboring a grudge
"
---------------------------
Phew! That person sure can run off at the mouth eh!
Here's a testimonial you may find helpful:
------------------------------------
" I started at Thunder in spring 2003, on the MU-2. The plane is like nothing you will ever fly again, so be prepared for a serious ego bruising. Once you get past that, here's the lifestyle down-lo:
For the MU-2, it's a $4,000 bond for F/o. You pay them, and once you pass your ride they pay you back over 24 months. If you are going to be on the MU-2, you should put in as many hours of studying the manuals as you possibly can before you start your groundschool. It's the most thorough groundschool you will ever go through, and you will be expected to remember truly arcane details about the aircraft. Even if you take this to heart, you will be overwhelmed by the information presented to you; only some of it is actually relevant to your life but that doesn't matter. That being said, the MU-2 training captain is a truly nice person who could probably build her own MU-2 from scratch. The trouble is, she expects you to be able to do so also.
You fly medevacs. Your schedule works out to 2 days on-call for every day off, usually 10 on and 5 off, or 8 on and 4 off. Some bases have you going Monday to Friday with weekends off. You usually will be on-call from 11pm the night before your days on until 11pm the night of your days off. If you get called at 10:58pm on your last night, you will be expected to fly a full 15 hour day. You will not be paid overtime, nor will you be paid for working on stat holidays. If you get called in on your days off, you may be paid a little extra, but the deal seems to vary from person to person.
You are expected to arrive at the airport roughly 20 minutes after your pager goes off, and to be airborne in 60 minutes. Think hard about what that means. You will be in the middle of grocery shopping or a movie or a haircut, and you will have to drop everything and go. Keep a set of work clothes in your car, and keep a lunch ready. If you haven't been paged out by 3pm, have a two-hour nap or you will be pooched when the pager goes off at 10pm and you fly straight until 1pm the following afternoon.
Your first year, you will make 24,000 per year, with $2 meal allowance for each hour on duty, and $7 for each hour's detention time away from base, past the first hour. If you land somewhere and wait for 59 minutes before your patient is loaded, you get nothing. If you wait for 90 minutes, you get 30 minutes detention.
After a year's service, you will start to be paid mileage. 2 cents a mile for your first year up to 10 cents a mile after 5 years as f/o. As far as I know, noone has been there longer than a couple of years without being offered an upgrade to captain.
As captain, will will get 10 cents a mile your first year, up to 20 cents a mile after 5. You will also get $15/hour detention instead of $7. The upgrade to captain on the MU-2 will cost you $10,000 and they will pay it back over 2 years from the start of your upgrade. If they still owe you money from your f/o bond, it will be credited toward your captain's upgrade. You'd better make sure you have a rich uncle or a good credit rating, as there is no way you will be able to save the $10k from your f/o's paycheque.
In real life as an f/o, that works out to about $900 - 1000 takehome every two weeks. Keep in mind that around $85 of that is your own money, paid back to you outta your $4,000.
Dispatch is nice; one of them is truly stellar and I don't know about any of the other current ones; they have since quit.
The maintenance is good. They fix broken planes, and the mechanics care about doing a good job. If you are lucky enough to be posted to Sudbury, you will work with one of the finest mechanics alive.
You will not be pressured to bust minimums; the MOH pays for the flight whether or not you make it in. That being said, there is pressure to attempt flights even when there is no realistic chance of successfully landing.
You may be expected to move from one base to another, or even from one aircraft type to another. No big deal there, unless you have a family or don't like moving every few months.
Managment - overall they are typical, but best viewed from a great distance (The CP may or may not have 'issues' with control). Don't fool yourself into thinking you will receive support from them if you screw up, or if you cost them money. You are expected to give your heart and soul, and in return you get a regular paycheque and around 700 hours a year of multi-turbine. You will never hear a word about what a good job you are doing, but rest assured if you make a mistake you will hear about it immediately. Management tends to use the stick rather than the carrot; then again most operators do.
The medics are generally really good to work with, though you may grow resentful of their work schedules and pay, which will be roughly half of your work schedule, and twice your pay. The actual people are great though.
This next part is a little more personal, but you still may find it helpful, I dunno..
I was dismissed from Thunder when my time to go captain came and I informed them I didn't have $10k to spare, and that I didn't want to move back to another base (Timmins, widely regarded at the time as the worst base, and where I had just moved from), my fourth move for Thunder in 18 months.
During this time I had a few emails back and forth from the chief pilot (which I kept, of course - PM Sulako if you want a copy of them
) explaining that I didn't want to lose my job, but he held fast to his position that I wasn't playing by the rules of the agreement I signed when I asked that I not be transferred to Timmins. He may have ended up being flexible on the 10k bond; it's happened in the past when they have been jammed for captains - they pay the 10k and then just threaten to sue you if you leave before your 24 months are up. We never got to that stage though. I knew I was done when I told him I didn't want to move again, it was just a question of when. It's unfortunate as other pilots had declined moves without being let go, but you will find out soon enough that there are different deals for different people - politics is king there and I admit I didn't play the game very well.'When' turned out to be 2 weeks after my last email from him when he said "I will not discuss this matter any further".
The way they did it was interesting; I got the phone call after a day's flying, telling me to leave my keys and pager in the office, and that they were parking the MU-2 and transferring both base captains to the King Air. The very next day, management told the captains that they were keeping the MU-2, but they still 'laid me off' and replaced me with an f/o from another base. A quick word with employment standards in Ottawa told me that wasn't kosher, but it was clear that I was no longer welcome and I chose not to fight the issue.
Since then I have gone on to a much better situation, so that kinda worked out in the end. I have tried to be honest and impartial, but parts of this are still only my opinion, so take my words with a healthy dose of skepticism. After all, they essentially fired me (though they were kind enough to mark it "laid off" on my severance form) so I could be harboring a grudge
"---------------------------
Phew! That person sure can run off at the mouth eh!
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Vickers vanguard
- Rank 7
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- Joined: Mon Aug 23, 2004 2:04 pm
- Location: YUL
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Jaques Strappe
- Rank (9)
- Posts: 1847
- Joined: Mon Feb 07, 2005 6:34 pm
- Location: YYZ
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Flying Low
- Rank 8
- Posts: 928
- Joined: Sun Feb 15, 2004 7:22 pm
- Location: Northern Ontario...why change now?
Oh no...full names????? Are you nuts....I can see the moderator stampede from here! 
"The ability to ditch an airplane in the Hudson does not qualify a pilot for a pay raise. The ability to get the pilots, with this ability, to work for 30% or 40% pay cuts qualifies those in management for millions in bonuses."
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sprucemonkey
- Rank 8
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- Joined: Thu Feb 19, 2004 10:31 pm
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Jaques Strappe
- Rank (9)
- Posts: 1847
- Joined: Mon Feb 07, 2005 6:34 pm
- Location: YYZ
Hey Whip
Thats hilarious! If it was the same incident, ( 1992-1993 ) I was sitting on the picnic table eating my KFC when I saw them do a beautiful gear up in YPQ. It wasn't the above two flying though. The funny thing is, they were there to pick up my patient because the MU-2 I was flying, had a gear problem.
The other one I watched was at YKZ during a snow shower, they broke out doing the localizer right over the threshold and went for it! Must have hit the runway doing a 1000 fpm! Watched the main wheels fly off towards the highway and when she finally came to rest, the tip tanks were vertical.
These are two that I actually witnessed. There were many others and eventually Bon Air was shut down. I actually ferried a couple of their MU-2's to the States after the doors were closed.
Thats hilarious! If it was the same incident, ( 1992-1993 ) I was sitting on the picnic table eating my KFC when I saw them do a beautiful gear up in YPQ. It wasn't the above two flying though. The funny thing is, they were there to pick up my patient because the MU-2 I was flying, had a gear problem.
The other one I watched was at YKZ during a snow shower, they broke out doing the localizer right over the threshold and went for it! Must have hit the runway doing a 1000 fpm! Watched the main wheels fly off towards the highway and when she finally came to rest, the tip tanks were vertical.
These are two that I actually witnessed. There were many others and eventually Bon Air was shut down. I actually ferried a couple of their MU-2's to the States after the doors were closed.
Sulako, good post.
I've never been involved with Thunder and I dont plan to be. Your post however made me realize that I have things pretty good where I am. That was a good reminder of how the "grass isn't neccessarily greener" at the next door neighbhors'. I have a renewed appreciation for my job conditions. Should last about 48 hours until I start "bitching" again.
I've never been involved with Thunder and I dont plan to be. Your post however made me realize that I have things pretty good where I am. That was a good reminder of how the "grass isn't neccessarily greener" at the next door neighbhors'. I have a renewed appreciation for my job conditions. Should last about 48 hours until I start "bitching" again.
I think it was 91, I could look in my logbook for the exact date. In the comments section of that particular flight I wrote "who knew fibre glass could make sparks" I was also pissed because I had to fly to NF4 and get a ride back to YPQ. In recollection though, I don't think they landed gear up just to make me fly to another airport!!
Wasn't that NAC?sprucemonkey wrote:Aero...do you remember the day C-FKAY fell on its ass out front of the Avitat?
SULAKO is very accurate in his post. I did well as a Captain, but I was typed (no bond) there for 2 years on the "mileage plan" and made a mint.
Your mileage may vary..
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oldncold
- Rank (9)
- Posts: 1064
- Joined: Thu May 13, 2004 11:17 am
- Location: south of 78N latitude , north of 30'latitude
Thuder Airlines
there are still a few good guys in tbay/ p.d and m. h. they give the company some stability and street credibility.
but since the m.o.h. 3yr fuel contract with esso is due next month according to my sources it will be interesting to see how the it goes with the new bid. with the new fuel prices going to be ALOT higher for moh/
the fuel burn king air or mu2 verses those pesky airbravo folks pc12's
going to be like watching a big poker championship on espn. wouldnot want to go all in just yet.
but since the m.o.h. 3yr fuel contract with esso is due next month according to my sources it will be interesting to see how the it goes with the new bid. with the new fuel prices going to be ALOT higher for moh/
the fuel burn king air or mu2 verses those pesky airbravo folks pc12's
going to be like watching a big poker championship on espn. wouldnot want to go all in just yet.
Sulako"A quick word with employment standards in Ottawa told me that wasn't kosher, but it was clear that I was no longer welcome and I chose not to fight the issue. "
I'm curious why you wouldn't fight for whats right? They might do th same thing to the next guy. (not trying to start anything )
I'm curious why you wouldn't fight for whats right? They might do th same thing to the next guy. (not trying to start anything )
Sulako's post about conditions, pay, etc.. is fairly accurate. One thing he didn't mention though is time free from duty. Standard time off is 10 hours rest after a shift, unless it's been a super long day (14-15 hours of duty) where you can request 11 or even 12 hours of rest and it will be approved (11 more then 12). When considering that a good chunk of other places only give you the required 8 or 9, it's nice to get the extra hour or two.
You start with a bag full of luck and an empty bag of experience. The trick is to fill the bag of experience before you empty the bag of luck.
