Alaska Air Reviews

Pros

Free travel, great job while I was in school, down to earth employees, often times it was fun to work.

Cons

The positions I was in was unionized so the higher seniority people could sometimes be lazy and you had to make up for the slack. All while they get paid a lot more than you for doing the same job.

Advice to Senior Management

No personal feel to any management feedback or job reviews.

Pros

Decent benefits, including flights (when not full)

Cons

Middle management is squeezed to perform more and more with less while upper management enjoys secretive "perks" and front line (union) are paid well through contracted wages and benefits.

Advice to Senior Management

Work toward increased transparency, honesty, and internal succession planning. Train, mentor, and promote from the inside to gain trust and loyalty. Performance Based Pay (formerly profit sharing) should be the same percentage of wages or salary company-wide and not higher for upper management.

Pros

- The individuals are nice enough to work with.
- They are flexible with their hours and personal time off.

Cons

- If felt like, I imagine, working in a cave. The building was run down and had all sorts of issues. Even the light fixtures and sinks wouldn't work properly.
- Management would give little respect to those working under them.
- Many people were not qualified to work in their positions.
- No "perks" and terrible benefits.
- Little to no recognition given.
- One person would be expected to do the work of an entire team. Meaning positions were not filled and people were over worked.

Pros

Good benefits. Good coworkers and friendly/open management. Supportive of work/life balance I wasn't there for very long so I can't say much more.

Cons

Some of the technology is old and outdated.. Pay is low compared to some other industries, but the benefits are great.

Pros

Great benefits and a great corporate culture. People here love the industry and love the company, and there are great benefits as well.

Cons

Below average compensation. Could be making much more in a different industry. Alaska (and I would assume most airlines) are cheap when it comes to compensation.

Pros

* Great family type atmosphere
* People are passionate about their business
* Generally, good work-life balance (unless during busy season or project work)
* One of the best in a tough industry
* Relatively small company, can make a real impact

Cons

* Management seems to be slow to get rid of poor performers
* Many leaders run things by micro-management, very much a command and control environment (more so in some areas than others)
* Pay appears to be indexed to airline averages. That is fine if you only employ pilots and flight attendants, but it doesn't work when you have skilled tech and management employees. There are plenty of other employers on the west coast that will pay double for comparable work.

Advice to Senior Management

Clean out the dead-wood and micro-managers for starters. Review compensation. Don't play games with resourcing. If you have a position open, fill it.

Pros

flight benefits are a plus and great people

Cons

low pay, bad health insurance

Pros

Flight benefits! The ability to trade away 50% of your shifts gives anyone the ability to use their flight benefits to travel the world. Alaska Airlines has a lot of pride and brand recognition which helps to drive the expectations of customer service in a big way. Work was fun when it was busy and you could never predict who or what you would see checking in at the airport.

Cons

The pay was the reason I left, it takes a lifetime to max out the pay scale and starting pay was only 10.80. The hours were also rough, it wasn't bad because shifts are bid on based on seniority but if you get stuck on a relief schedule your hours changed every week. One week it was starting work at 1 am the next week it was 3:45pm. I wasn't able to see my family and I ended up leaving the company.

Pros

flight benefits
health and vision benefits

Cons

uncaring management
not alot of recognition for a job well done

Pros

Great VP for IT. There are [only] a couple of bright spots in management.

Cons

Too much complacency and acceptance of status-quo. Promotions are equal regardless of performance and achievement. H/R works hard to low-ball promotion rate. IT is often the obstacle for other divisions. IT likes to limit choices with convoluted policies driven by leaders that have little care for customer service. Leaders are driven by an overly conservative approach that only benefits the leaders and not the company.

Advice to Senior Management

It's all about the customer. Please work to enable rather than hinder the company's progress. Go out of the way to provide solutions instead of being paralyzed with indecision. Limit the effect of your micro-managers so that innovation and high-performers can flourish.