How is the pay at Metro for Pilots?

unless Metro is right smack bang in the middle of the town where you want to be, you have a pension and your other half has a great job, enjoy the Diickensian wages and vacation !!

If you're a pilot, Starting Pay is low. If you have a family, insurance is good because of the NO monthly premium. But insurance "quality" is sub par. A lot of claims get kicked to deductible. 401K match is good, overtime such as ferry flights, training and maintenance flights are below industry standard of 1.5. Metro only pays straight time for helping out with those flights on your time off. They also only pay straight time for travel days and don't pay you for your return home day from training. Regular overtime (meaning if a pilot calls off sick or takes vacation) is 1.5. The vacation policy is weak and not up to industry standard. No vacation the first year and then only 5 days for the first 5 years after that. Like all of EMS you can't just say, how's METRO? It's really all about your base or hospital that you're stationed at.

Metro is a good company overall with some growing pains. They also need to step up their pay and the things I listed above. Metro is a small family run company. But, they are running the risk of going the way of Air Methods and PHI and getting too big, too fast and getting too far out ahead of the reigns. They deal 90% or more with hospitals. So, Metro is a good company, but it completely depends on the hospital you get stationed at, on how you will like or dislike your time with them. Metro still has the feel of an aviation company but obviously completely beholden to the hospitals will. Which for a pilot, if you have conflict with the hospital, you may get hung out to dry, because they pay Metro's bills.

Good solid aviation answer. 

get too big, too fast. They are a lot smaller than they used to be. Medical side is about the same size it's been for a long time. Splitting the certificate and having Phoenix and it's assortment of misfits handle more and more of aviation and the horrible PHX HR department is PHI's problem. PHI does pay OT for anything beyond your 7 except for training. Overall, PHI pays pilots pretty well.

I cannot imagine spending a whole day traveling home from training without compensation. FIVE DAYS of vacation and NOTHING the first year?! You call that weak? That is the worst PTO policy I've ever heard of in almost any job. I would never even consider Metro.

What was said above is mostly all true, except if claims do get punted to deductable, then you have a rehimburstment account that will reimburse you for the deductable so medical is completely free to you if you use the reimbursment wisely.

Starting pay is low, and the "Overtime" is also quite low, getting straight time for ferrys and training is kind of bull S# if you ask me, but I have never be denied getting paid for something I did, including the trip home after training, so not sure where the above poster got that from. I have also gotten a 4% raise every year I've been here which isn't exactly enough, but at least it's something.

There are rumors floating that at the first of the year the pay scale will be changing and everyone should be getting a significant boost in pay. I've heard the DO is really trying for it and the CFO and Pres are really pushing back on it. Hopefully they get their differences worked out and we all reap the rewards.

I agree with almost all of what you said, with the exception being "growing pains."  Metro has been around quite a while.  They have been operating over 100 aircraft for quite a while.  At this point it isn't growing pains, it is unfortunate management policy.

In my experience, just a bit higher.  

Health insurance is decent, but if you don't need it, that's another $5,000 a year

Wow.

Their time off work / life balance for mechs used to be a sick joke. Always on call with 4 days off a month

Now the PHI mechs are the ones always on call

Unfortunately 

Honestly it's a good company to work for as long as you don't work in LA. 

Smart box Iris with the camera and the card reader dat be telling on ya when you wiggle dem sticks like a nascar driver.  If you just reach up there and pop that dialer cb out while you flying along it can't record what you doing when you decided to go hotdoggin'

Just don't forget to pop it back in before you land or ya mech gonna find out on the daily.

Gonna be funny cuz they gonna change dialer after dialer trying to figure out why they cant get no data to record on dat aircraft...

first, they don't look at all the recordings so they really wouldn't know if you pulled the the breaker. second, if they did, they would see you reach up and pull the breaker. third, if you were such an idiot that you would do something like that just so you could yank and bank, the med crew would probably rat you out in a heartbeat. 

Safety Dept doesn't even watch the videos unless something happens. All they get is alerts if the recorded data shows an excursion outside of their alerts that have been set. Guess what one of those alerts is? Power failure fault in flight. So... by pulling the breaker you are specifically asking for them to look at that data.

If you could actually read you would see there is a pretty stout set of rules as to when they are actually allowed to look at the video and contrary to popular belief they are not able to watch video live.

You think that's a wide angle lense on that camera think again.  The field of view is not wide enough to see you reach up to snap a cb out.

You think data is not checked daily?  Think again, PHI O and G pull cards on every daily to download them.  The camera is flagged if it's blurry or out of focus.

And if you think your benevolent Co. will not cross that line to fry you with what you said in a cockpit conversation.......let me tell you a little story about a time before IRIS.....a time when a 92 was flown by a pilot who was top dog in the union during the strike.....guess what happened when he landed?  THe cvr was removed by yours truly and downloaded by yours truly and the audio was sent up the chain as per request of the Director of Avionics.  SO yeah you know all about recorded conversations and what not.   And no....that pilot was not smart enought to remember to hit the erase button when he got wow.  He don't work there no more.

Some aircraft there is no breaker. Never heard of anybody anywhere getting in trouble over something on the IRIS. Most of the time the audio and video is garbage anyway. There is no erase button and I'm not surprised the pilot doesn't work there anymore as this was 15 years ago. Did PHI even have 92's in 2006? There would be hundreds of hours of tape each day. Nobody is looking at them until something happens. 

92 has an MPFR, had an MPFR before iris, still has an MPFR with an erase button on the control panel you dipsh!+ ...

learn to read english.

92 dialer breaker is on the right hand c/b pnl behind the pilot's head.  camera is mounted on left hand upper side of aft cockpit and only captures the instrument panel.....

407 camera barely catches the pos lt breaker sw.  guess what dialer breaker is out of view on that one too.

a-dub, same $#!+, out of view.

EC same as above.....do you even have a clue or do you just work in the lamps department?

Unless you are tapping into the live feed to check it on ya phone.....you don't have a clue of it's field of view......which I can divulge......for a fee.....

Class dismissed. Someone got SCHOOLED!

Wow! Someone forgot to stop taking their roids before typing...

First off, we were talking about Metro. What they do at PHI I have no clue about nor was this discussion involving. Nor does metro have any S92's. Second, I know exactly what the camera can and can't see as I have been involved in numerious mx operations where we have had to adjust the camera. I literally have a memo (With pictures! For those mechanics with a 2nd grade level of learning) showing what should and should not be in the camera view.

Pulling breakers for required equipment is a sure way to get yourself fired.  Furthermore, if said employer decides to send that info to the FSDO, a very long suspension or revocation is in your future.  If you hold an ATP, they will hold you to a higher standard and weed you out.

Remember, you have to get away with it every time, they only have to catch you doing it once.  It is the company's prerogative to write the SOP the way they see fit.  It  is your duty to follow the SOP, or not accept their money.  Yes, I do not like it sometimes, either, but life is full of compromise.  

To the OP - Metro is a great company and I have enjoyed working there most of the time.   Highly recommended.

What isn't required equipment?

Yes. I do.  here is an example

After April 23, 2018, no person> may operate a helicopter in air ambulance operations unless it is equipped with an approved flight data monitoring system capable of recording flight performance data. This system must:

(a) Receive electrical power from the bus that provides the maximum reliability for operation without jeopardizing service to essential or emergency loads, and

(b) Be operated from the application of electrical power before takeoff until the removal of electrical power after termination of flight.

Or a CVR.

but you never mentioned an employer but gotta get said in there.

the FAA is going to suspend or revoke your certificate for pulling that breaking. you're in a dream world bro

is behind the industry in pilot pay and vacation.  Nearly every pilot I know that's left Metro was for better pay

Second that.  Pay is below average for VFR, way below average for IFR, and vacation might be the worst in the industry.  If pay is important to you, you can do better.  If location is your highest priority, then maybe you are willing to sacrifice.

Yet offering more than Air Methods or PHI...

To which part of the industry are you referring?

The pay stinks. It's 2021 and Metro pays like its 1995. Too many people don't understand that Metro makes a crap-load of money and the management team makes a lot of money for basically forming a poor relationship with the FAA. The President is the son of the owner and is about as bright as a 20 cent light bulb. A complete buffoon and has nothing to do with the success this company has attained. 5 days vacation and an average medical bnefits to employees. On top of that Pilots are micro-managed to the nth degree, thus the constant job openings. Up to 15 job openings a week!

Do you even work for the same Metro I do? Because literally everything you said is completely not true from what I have seen. Other than the pay stinks, you do have that part right.

Wake up pal, Metro pay stinks, straight time for training? Do you really think that your time off is worth straight time? The benefits stink as well. Everything besides the pay is good or you think it is? Go do a steep turn to avoid something and tell me you are not getting a call explaining it? Because at my base we get a call that goes something like this "hey no big deal but why did you do that steep turn?" and mind your p's and q's when you reply because Metro is all about how you explain things. Oh and lets not talk about how the regional managers are sooo scared of their maintenance counterparts. The director of maintenanace has a pair because the chief pilot and the regional managers, except for one, wouldn't know what balls are unless they got hit in the face with them. Your problem is that you are tooo focused on keeping the short term and not focusing on the big picture. Pay is the big picture and the fact that you can't see that the pay is 1/3 less than it should be in 2022 is the problem. Hey metro, instead of wasting all that money to do a LOSA study why not start paying your PICS, you know the guys and gals who make you your money, a better pay? No, we can't do that because instead of paying our pilots well we need to send people out so that we can then send a company email out telling our pilots, once again, what they are doing wrong. And you don't agree with anything but pay? You, another metro pilot are looking at the small thing and missing the big picture on what is wrong with HEMS. Ask a mechanic if pay is the only thing wrong.The whole industry is messed up and the pay is the least of it. Go make a mistake and see how that goes for you. I'm not even talking anywhere near an accident.