Alaska Flying Jobs.

[Rudabega]

Hello,
I am a first time poster on these forums. I am currently looking on www.flyalaska.com and preparing to apply for a seasonal flying job in Alaska for 09 and I was hoping to get some input from the board as to what operations to stay away from with reference to their maintainance.

I am a 1100 hour SEL CFI with 250 hours of Cessna P210 time and 400 hours of mountain flying in Colorado.

Thank you,
Rudy

[akaviator]

Been lurking here forever, might as well pipe in on something.

Most of the carriers are going to look for at least 100 hrs Alaska time, but your mountain experience will probably help. They'll put you on high mins for awhile and then turn you loose.

Maintenance wise, I would say that the planes are taken fairly good care of. They look rough, but the important stuff is usually in good order. I can remember a few times when different instruments or avionics would be giving me an issue and the next day there would be a hole in the panel. If it breaks and its not mandatory, out it goes!

I never flew southeast, but there is an operator there that has a pretty bad rep for lousy maintenance. My recommendation would be to head into the interior or to the southwest part of the state.

I'm flying jets now, and other than staying in nice hotels and fancier equipment it has nothing over flying in the bush.

[Muskeg56]

You might do better to come back and ask questions about a specific operator that you're considering accepting a job with, rather than asking people to start throwing out names.
Flyalaska's a good site. I used the list of flight operators there to land my first Alaska flying job and while I like the job I have now, I still keep my membership just to keep up with who's hiring.
I also wouldn't avoid SE Alaska. There's plenty of good operators down there that will sometimes take on pilots with low times.

[akaviator]

You might do better to come back and ask questions about a specific operator that you're considering accepting a job with, rather than asking people to start throwing out names.
Flyalaska's a good site. I used the list of flight operators there to land my first Alaska flying job and while I like the job I have now, I still keep my membership just to keep up with who's hiring.
I also wouldn't avoid SE Alaska. There's plenty of good operators down there that will sometimes take on pilots with low times.

I shouldn't have thrown a blanket statement over SE, no disrespect to the pilots and operators down there. My experience in Alaska is everywhere except SE so I leaned toward my op specs.

[Monguse]

Maintenance issues

The one operator in southeast that had a bad rep for poor maintenance, has been shut down by the FAA. Below is the URL for the official FAA report.

http://aprn.org/wp-content/uploads/2...b-20080724.pdf

[aviatorhi]

Try Hageland.