ALPC: Do you have any plans to alter Horizon’s fleet composition over the next few years?
LH: Not significantly. Right now we have 20 70-seat CRJ-700s, 20 74-seat Q400s, and 28 37-seat Q200s. We also have firm orders for 12 more of the Q400s and we will take delivery of those between December 2006 and June 2007.

LaMar Haugaard

ALPC: What are your hiring projections?
LH: In the next year, we’ll be hiring 12 to 15 pilots every month.

ALPC: What is the starting pay for first officers and captains at Horizon currently?
LH: As of this moment, the FO pay starts at $28.10 per hour with a five to six year upgrade time, and captain pay starts at $55.98 per hour, but we just approved a 1.5 percent increase over both of those figures that will take effect soon.

ALPC: What are your minimum requirements?
LH: Our published minimums are 1,000 hours total time and 100 hours multiengine time. The average we’re seeing in new hires is about 1,600 or 1,700 hours total time and 600 or 700 hours multi.

ALPC: Where are most of your new hires coming from?
LH: We’re getting a tremendous number of pilots from regionals that are having trouble right now. We’re getting a lot from Mesaba and a lot from Independence Air. So the majority of new hires are probably coming from other regionals.

ALPC: Are many coming from flight schools?
LH: A few. We have an active, ongoing program with the University of North Dakota and with Central Washington University. Both of those programs have been active since the summer of 1998 and we recruit from those campuses once a year.

ALPC: What labor affiliation do the pilots have at Horizon?
LH: It’s actually the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), Local 747. We have a five-year contract with them that is amendable on September 12, 2006. It was our first contract, which was signed the day after the September 11th attacks.

ALPC: Tell us about your interviewing and hiring procedures.
LH: It’s a one-day process, albeit a very long day. We just switched over to an online recruiting system called Recruit Max. Once a person is given a call for an interview, they submit their entire packet of documents (certificates, type ratings, etc…).
The morning interview is a three-part process, They have an interview (one-on-one) with the personnel office. Then they have an oral examination that lasts for about 45 minutes. It covers (the applicant’s) history, procedural knowledge, and performance. That examination is conducted by one of our pilot evaluators. Then the third part is an interview with one of us in this department.

We then provide a nice lunch for the candidates, and we drive them out to Hillsboro Aviation, where they have a brand new Frasca 142 simulator. We run them through about a 45-minute instrument profile on that machine. We’ve found that to be an extremely good screening tool. We used to have a Frasca onsite but it was old and needed maintenance, so we just use Hillsboro’s for the pilot classes.

ALPC: From that point, how long is it until a decision is made?
LH: We usually call back in a couple of days to schedule training, if they are a “go.”

ALPC: Tell us about your flight experience.
LH: I started flying in high school, and got all my ratings while at the University of North Dakota. I got a bachelor’s of business administration there in 1985 and came to Horizon in 1987 as a line pilot. I fell in love with the company when I first came here. I loved the vision they had and I loved the people who worked here. And being from the Midwest, I fell in love with the mountains right away also.

ALPC: Any other advice you have for pilots applying to Horizon?
LH: I am really proud of the fact that Horizon has more money invested in technology than any other regional carrier (such as the stat-of-the-art the Head-up Guidance System [HGS]—informally called the “fogbuster” to land in lower visibility than previously allowed.) So we are looking for people with strong technical skills. But we are also looking for people who can implement the customer service goals we have for the organization. We want people who see their job description as much more than just flying an airplane. (