As you may be able to tell from the title, I had a fairly eventful day yesterday, from officially getting the green light on my loan and signing documents to seeing my local AME and obtaining a first class medical followed immediately be calling ATP admissions from my car in the parking lot of the doctor’s office to officially schedule my start date with ATP. I will be attending the Everett, WA location beginning on January 22nd.
As a side note, I actually have one quick question specifically for Tory as an employee of Horizon. As I’ve mentioned in other posts, the area I call home is the Spokane, WA area (I’m very fond of the PNW if you can’t tell) and I noticed on Horizon’s employment/recruitment pages that Spokane is one of the locations that a pilot can be based out of. I would love to return to this area in the future if possible and I was wondering if new hires at Horizon get to pick or have any say on their primary location or if that is ultimately just assigned by Horizon?
You scored! I just visited the Boeing factory at Paine Field last month.
That is a very unique airport. I can only imagine all of the cool things
you’ll see. There will be no shortage of inspiration
You are correct. Spokane is one of Horizon’s bases. Having the ability to
hand select a base will depend on company needs, and aircraft type may also
be a determining factor. Not every new hire gets to choose their base,
initially. Sometimes the company will need to assign a base to the new
hires to fulfill their staffing needs. Either way, pilots always have the
ability to request their preferred base. The company will honor preferred
base requests as space becomes available. FYI, ATP operates the same way.
When students near the end of the program, and have expressed interest in
teaching for ATP, they will select their preferred training center from a
list of available locations. If you want to teach at the TC that you
trained at, but it isn’t on the list, requests for a transfer are made in a
similar fashion as previously mentioned.
Back to your question. Like I said earlier though, aircraft type,
specifically the ERJ, only has one base at the moment, SEA. More ERJ bases
may be added as the company grows. PDX is actually considered a satellite
ERJ base, but only 20% of the ERJ operations are in and out of PDX. Until
PDX becomes a permanent ERJ base, those pilots are still technically SEA
based.
