Great application process with a positive experience - Flight Attendant Horizon Air Employee Review

You can genuinely tell that most of the management here cares about you and the company. If we are in an impossible situation on the ramp, they actually come out and help rather than just staring at impossible metrics. The regional environment feels like a mom-and-pop operation. Everyone pitches in! from flight attendants to station management. We are a small division of Alaska with only 50 E175 jets, but we are known for a culture that keeps people around, even when major opportunities knock. The Horizon Heart is real, and I love helping our guests on our little jets. There are also excellent advancement opportunities. The pipelines through the QX Maintenance, Pilot, and Dispatcher programs offer great paths to highly sought-after roles at Alaska and Horizon. I plan on building a career here and continuing to grow with Alaska. Management at both the corporate and station levels feels honest, which I appreciate. There are town halls, company streams, and road shows where executives visit the stations personally to answer open questions. As a small regional in a tough economy with tight margins, the news isn't always good, and we know we're sometimes a lesser priority than mainline. But they are extremely transparent, post long-term recovery plans, and address complaints at every level. Coming from a ground service contractor where we didn't even have a seat at the table, this is huge. The benefits are great. You get both Alaska Mainline and Horizon Regional flight benefits (jumping ahead of mainline staff on Horizon-operated flights), plus ZED fares for other airlines. Boise is a rapidly growing metro, so we get hands-on experience working SkyWest and Alaska Mainline aircraft unlike most Horizon agents which really helps the resume.

Like any airline, you will hear people complain about seniority, bad bids, and tough shifts. You have to put in your time; that's just the industry, so I don't hold it against Horizon. My biggest genuine concern is the future, specifically regarding contracting and Alaska’s McGee. Boise is a growing market, and we are seeing an expanding mainline fleet. However, because we are Horizon staff, there's a real fear that as mainline operations grow, they might contract out the mainline or lower regional ground handling. I would absolutely love to cheer on the growth of the Alaska Air Group, whether that's mainline or QX. But if mainline growing means I am out of the party, it sucks. We all want to be a part of that growth and the Alaska family! I love sharing my Horizon Heart no matter how small we are.

The job has great variety of interesting tasks--indoor and outdoor, mental and physical--and shifts always go quickly because of this. At my station there's camaraderie, support, and teamwork among coworkers that makes me enjoy being at work. I also like being part of a company that seems to backup their purported values such as safety and kindness. A big plus is that they provide health benefits even for part-time workers. There also seem to be a lot of options for career growth/changes.

The pay is not commensurate to the type of work that's performed/expected. You are basically doing ten different jobs with rigid/detailed regulations to know and big safety consequences if you get it wrong, for less pay than you'd make at many entry level fast food gigs. Also, the job would be difficult if you have a tight schedule, because it's rare to get off a shift exactly at the time it supposedly ends--you leave when the work is done, not at the time that's written on your schedule.