Probation, compared.
Every regional airline with a Flight Attendant contract, side by side with SkyWest. How long probation lasts, what it takes to finish it, and what protects you while you're on it.
How long is probation at each airline?
Tap any airline to see when its clock starts and who represents its Flight Attendants.
Average probation at unionized regionals: about 7.2 months. SkyWest's current rule is nearly 200 days longer, and that is the best case.
Tilde (~) figures are converted from months as written in each contract. Where the time between training and IOE was unknown or variable, a two-week time frame was used. The striped bar is the one-year rule SkyWest's own policy manual still shows, which management is no longer honoring.
How SkyWest got to 418 days. Plus.
Management moved the start of the clock from your date of hire to the day you finish IOE, then added a meeting to the end of it.
418 is a best-case scenario: IOE two weeks after training, and the release meeting held right at the one-year mark. We don't control our scheduling. Many of us wait weeks or months for IOE, then wait again for the meeting.
What makes them different from us?
Not the airplanes. Not the flying. One thing: their probation is written into a legally binding contract.
Management writes it, management changes it, and management can ignore it. Probation was extended without our consent and with no regard to the company's own policy manual.
When that happens, there is no one to appeal to and nothing to enforce.
Probation has a defined start, a defined length, and in most cases a defined cap on any extension. If management wants to change it, management has to negotiate it.
Flight Attendants on probation still have representation for contractual disputes, and every one of these airlines has a commuter policy.
When management unilaterally changes probation length, it shows exactly what it can and will get away with when there isn't a union in place to stop it. Management is changing and ignoring policies. It would have to adhere to a contract.
Pick an airline. Compare it to SkyWest.
Six questions that matter most in your first year, answered from each carrier's contract.
Where SkyWest stands alone.
Out of the eleven regional airlines compared, count how many share each SkyWest rule.
require a meeting with management to end probation
can extend probation with no time limit
give probationary Flight Attendants no representation at all
offer no commuter policy to new hires
SkyWest's best-case probation runs 106 days past the next-longest regional (GoJet, 312 days) and nearly 200 days past the unionized average. Every one of those "1 of 11" is SkyWest.
Three excused absences.
SkyWest's policy manual has no probationary reliability standard at all. Yet the company is terminating some Flight Attendants for three excused absences during the longest probation in the industry.
At unionized regionals the thresholds are written down: occurrences, points, warnings and steps that everyone can read before they're used.
A contract sets the limits.
Eleven airlines. Ten of them have a probation with limits management cannot move on its own, a representative on day one, and a commuter policy. The eleventh is the one we work for. Sign and send in a card, and we take one step closer to the protection of a legally binding contract.
Sources: the current collective bargaining agreements at Air Wisconsin, CommuteAir, Endeavor, Envoy, GoJet, Horizon, Mesa, Piedmont, PSA and Republic, and SkyWest's policy manual and eFAD. Attendance details marked "not found" were not located in the published agreement. Questions about your own situation on probation? Reach the Lifelines team, privately.