Alaska Airlines Pilot Response Essay

Since I was young I have always thought of being a pilot for Alaska Airlines. Due to the fact that I am already an airline pilot, I have a general understanding of the how the industry works. However, in order to gain more insight on this specific airline I solicited the opinions of two current pilots for Alaska Airlines. Unfortunately, we were unable to meet in person, but these pilots were kind enough to answer any questions I had via email.

I asked the same set of questions to both pilots and listed below each question are there responses. The first responses are from Eric Coronado, a first officer who has only been with Alaska Airlines since 2016. Eric is off probation, but still on reserve. The second set of responses are from Max Ramsey.

More schedule flexibility. Dropping is very difficult, the reserve allocation set up to always have insufficient reserve coverage somewhere.
b. Better handling of circadian and fatigue issues. Captain reserves alone make up the majority of fatigue calls, they're abused hard. However, we do a lot of flying that involves being awake in WOCL, and don't always get the recovery time from it.
c. Comfort issues like hotel locations, paying for dedicated crew shuttles, and having higher quality crew meals would all be nice.
d. There are a bunch of little things we do that are nice: we are installing CPDLC, we have good iPads and software (compared to the Surface), they provide chargers that work with the power outlets in the cockpit, they're adding USB ports to make charging more convenient, we have nice custom window shades, the cockpits are cleaned monthly, DMIs are dealt with quickly and don't accumulate.

5. What does Alaska Airlines do exceptionally well in order to promote a good working environment?
a. We seem to push a lot of authority to front line employees to help people out. Every email from management ends with an anecdote about how someone did something exceptional for a passenger, usually that required them “bending the rules” a