Northwestern Air Lease
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Aviatorcaptain
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- Joined: Fri Jan 10, 2014 7:51 pm
Northwestern Air Lease
Could someone send me some info on these guys? Capt and FO pay, schedule, hours/month. If someone from the company I would like to know more about the town as well!
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Diadem
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Re: Northwestern Air Lease
4500 hours for a Jetstream in Fort Smith?! You could be left-seat on a fancy jet in just about any city in the country with that kind of time.
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Aviatorcaptain
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Re: Northwestern Air Lease
I thought it was quite high as well. I don't meet the requirements posted but thought maybe I'd still have a chance. I've got around 2000 MPIC piston.
Re: Northwestern Air Lease
A couple of years ago, I posted a longer answer to your questions. The thread was deleted due to the shenanigans of another ex-employee. Perhaps the mods are able to re-post what I wrote. If my children allow me the time later on, I'll type out another reply. I can quickly say that, overall, I very much enjoyed my time with NWAL and would happily work there again. I left only because my family and I wished to be near family again, which we had none of in Fort Smith. I can't speak to what management currently wants in Direct-Entry Captains, but when I first started 4 years ago, I came with 3000 hours, around 1,000 MPIC, and probably close to 2100 PIC in general, but all of that time was acquired farther north in shorter, crappier airstrips than the Jetstream will ever see.
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cdnpilot77
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Re: Northwestern Air Lease
And with a broken foot!JEG wrote:That time was acquired farther north in shorter, crappier airstrips than the Jetstream will ever see.
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Sky_Conqueror
- Rank 3
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Re: Northwestern Air Lease
So if the DEC minimums are that high. I'm curious to know what FO high requirements are lol. Like 2500 total and 1000 multi and 700 MPIC. I would not be surprised!!!
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CubanCloudRider
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Re: Northwestern Air Lease
FOs are trained in-house, as are captains. Usually the FOs come from within the company departments; ramp and/or operations. It is rare for an outside FO to be hired, mind you it's been done before. Flying is avg 800/yr for FO. Captains probably do 900-1000hrs/yr depending on how much time you take off.
CCR
CCR
Re: Northwestern Air Lease
I'm sorry this took so long, I was busy yesterday and couldn't get to type this out.
The Cuban is correct, they try to promote from within as much as possible. Direct Entry Captain and FO isn't very common, but it does happen. I won't go into the specific pay, as that's up to them to publish, but it was quite reasonable. It was base + mileage for the captains and the base alone was respectable. Mileage kicked in after approximately 80hrs/mth. I believe FO's are a similar setup. I saw months with as little as 70-80 hours and some where I was sitting at 115. It depended entirely on the usual combination of work/staffing levels. The Company itself I very much enjoyed working for. Management didn't push weather or maintenance issues, if it's broken or the weather's brutal, then so be it. They are a very family oriented company. When I hired on, I was told family comes first, if I need a day off because somebody got sick, then that's just the way it is. This was unfortunately tested when 3 months later. My brother in law died while I was somewhere between YMM and YEG. I finished out the day at my own discretion, but was told something along the lines of 'our sincere condolences, when are you leaving? Don't worry about us, come back whenever you are ready and do you need any OCS tickets for you and the family?'. When I was there, the schedule was theoretically published around the 25th for the next month. The scheduler was also a pilot, so how close to the 25th it was released depended entirely on how busy he was. Being a 703/704 company, it didn't always hold true, but was usually fairly accurate a week or so in advance. Also, being a smaller 703/704 company, pop-up charters do occasionally happen, especially if you are cross-trained onto the smaller machines. Shift-swapping with co-workers wasn't unheard of, as well as booking off random days in a month for events. Occasionally, if you got back from a flight with lots of time left in your day, maintenance would also ask if you could take a machine out for a rip to flight test whatever item required it. There are sometimes other sub-jobs in the company that they will hire/pay you for, and count as duty days. An example is the scheduler, also the Dangerous Goods Coordinator, Groundschool/Training Captain duties, things like that. The Jetstream itself is a neat plane. I personally really liked the cockpit layout, and found as a passenger that it is much more comfortable than a 1900. It's easy enough to land, can take a helluva crosswind and is built like a tank. They were just finishing upgrading the Jetstreams with Garmin 430/TCAS/TAWS/LPV and to a common cockpit standard when I left. The disadvantage of the Jetstream is that it is very underpowered.
The town of Fort Smith is nice enough, around 2,000 people. It's a 2.5-3.0 hour drive to Hay River down a mostly paved 2-lane highway. I say 2.5-3.0 due to Bison, Bear and the occasionally very rough gravel portion (about 60km I believe). Its around 15 hours to drive to Edmonton. The town website actually has a fairly good listing of what facilities are available. The Recreation Center is nice with a large gymnasium, raquetball court, workout gym, a really nice pool/sauna/hot tub/steam room area. There's a 9 hole golf course and a cross country ski club with something like 30km of groomed trails. The ski club is volunteer run, but a really nice facility. The golf course is a fun layout, but some parts the grass is pretty rough and it has artificial greens. It's in pretty good shape considering the size of their budget and workforce. The Slave River has I think 4 or 5 sets of rapids in succession. I was told that it's a world-renowned for white water rafting/kayaking/canoeing. They have a very active paddling club with instructors and a large event every summer open to the public. There is lots of camping, hiking, biking, dirt biking, quadding, fishing and snowmobiling right on the edge of town. I was able to park my sleds and quad right off my back step, and it was nice to be able to walk out the back door, fire up a snowmobile and take a kid for a rip. There's a handful of restaurants in town that vary from meh to good. There are some family-based events in town through the year, and organized kids sports was pretty well limited to hockey, figure skating and cross country skiing with the occasional soccer camp. On the other side, the bugs are something else. There's a happy time in the spring that is bug free, but if it's a bad year for mosquitoes and sand flies, I could barely take the kids to the park without spending most of my time swatting at flies. I usually packed a bug net in my golf bag in case it was a bad day, and occasionally needed it to cut the grass. If you need big city ammenities like fast food, Tim Horton's, a movie theatre (closest is Hay River) and big box stores, odds are you'll be miserable. If you're outdoorsy and like smaller towns, you'll do just fine. When I was there, the guys/girls I worked with often got together for drinks, golf, raquetball, dirt biking and things like that.
The Cuban is correct, they try to promote from within as much as possible. Direct Entry Captain and FO isn't very common, but it does happen. I won't go into the specific pay, as that's up to them to publish, but it was quite reasonable. It was base + mileage for the captains and the base alone was respectable. Mileage kicked in after approximately 80hrs/mth. I believe FO's are a similar setup. I saw months with as little as 70-80 hours and some where I was sitting at 115. It depended entirely on the usual combination of work/staffing levels. The Company itself I very much enjoyed working for. Management didn't push weather or maintenance issues, if it's broken or the weather's brutal, then so be it. They are a very family oriented company. When I hired on, I was told family comes first, if I need a day off because somebody got sick, then that's just the way it is. This was unfortunately tested when 3 months later. My brother in law died while I was somewhere between YMM and YEG. I finished out the day at my own discretion, but was told something along the lines of 'our sincere condolences, when are you leaving? Don't worry about us, come back whenever you are ready and do you need any OCS tickets for you and the family?'. When I was there, the schedule was theoretically published around the 25th for the next month. The scheduler was also a pilot, so how close to the 25th it was released depended entirely on how busy he was. Being a 703/704 company, it didn't always hold true, but was usually fairly accurate a week or so in advance. Also, being a smaller 703/704 company, pop-up charters do occasionally happen, especially if you are cross-trained onto the smaller machines. Shift-swapping with co-workers wasn't unheard of, as well as booking off random days in a month for events. Occasionally, if you got back from a flight with lots of time left in your day, maintenance would also ask if you could take a machine out for a rip to flight test whatever item required it. There are sometimes other sub-jobs in the company that they will hire/pay you for, and count as duty days. An example is the scheduler, also the Dangerous Goods Coordinator, Groundschool/Training Captain duties, things like that. The Jetstream itself is a neat plane. I personally really liked the cockpit layout, and found as a passenger that it is much more comfortable than a 1900. It's easy enough to land, can take a helluva crosswind and is built like a tank. They were just finishing upgrading the Jetstreams with Garmin 430/TCAS/TAWS/LPV and to a common cockpit standard when I left. The disadvantage of the Jetstream is that it is very underpowered.
The town of Fort Smith is nice enough, around 2,000 people. It's a 2.5-3.0 hour drive to Hay River down a mostly paved 2-lane highway. I say 2.5-3.0 due to Bison, Bear and the occasionally very rough gravel portion (about 60km I believe). Its around 15 hours to drive to Edmonton. The town website actually has a fairly good listing of what facilities are available. The Recreation Center is nice with a large gymnasium, raquetball court, workout gym, a really nice pool/sauna/hot tub/steam room area. There's a 9 hole golf course and a cross country ski club with something like 30km of groomed trails. The ski club is volunteer run, but a really nice facility. The golf course is a fun layout, but some parts the grass is pretty rough and it has artificial greens. It's in pretty good shape considering the size of their budget and workforce. The Slave River has I think 4 or 5 sets of rapids in succession. I was told that it's a world-renowned for white water rafting/kayaking/canoeing. They have a very active paddling club with instructors and a large event every summer open to the public. There is lots of camping, hiking, biking, dirt biking, quadding, fishing and snowmobiling right on the edge of town. I was able to park my sleds and quad right off my back step, and it was nice to be able to walk out the back door, fire up a snowmobile and take a kid for a rip. There's a handful of restaurants in town that vary from meh to good. There are some family-based events in town through the year, and organized kids sports was pretty well limited to hockey, figure skating and cross country skiing with the occasional soccer camp. On the other side, the bugs are something else. There's a happy time in the spring that is bug free, but if it's a bad year for mosquitoes and sand flies, I could barely take the kids to the park without spending most of my time swatting at flies. I usually packed a bug net in my golf bag in case it was a bad day, and occasionally needed it to cut the grass. If you need big city ammenities like fast food, Tim Horton's, a movie theatre (closest is Hay River) and big box stores, odds are you'll be miserable. If you're outdoorsy and like smaller towns, you'll do just fine. When I was there, the guys/girls I worked with often got together for drinks, golf, raquetball, dirt biking and things like that.
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Aviatorcaptain
- Rank 1
- Posts: 22
- Joined: Fri Jan 10, 2014 7:51 pm
Re: Northwestern Air Lease
4500 hours.... Jeebus.
A friend of mine went to NWAL got some hours and got out. At the time I was flying a caravan and our pay and hours were similar. Around 90k. Maybe it's different now. He said sometimes they did the backwards looking schedule to decide which days you have off. Something like this seems like it should be rotational or have a better schedule. Pay seems decent though.
A friend of mine went to NWAL got some hours and got out. At the time I was flying a caravan and our pay and hours were similar. Around 90k. Maybe it's different now. He said sometimes they did the backwards looking schedule to decide which days you have off. Something like this seems like it should be rotational or have a better schedule. Pay seems decent though.
