Originally Posted by
IBPilot
it's funny how many people think someone who has been at a regional for more than 8 years must have check ride busts, no degree, dui's etc. I'll put the flying skills and resume of the lifers I fly with up against your resume any day. And how the heck are we gonna upgrade (or even get qualified as FO) if there is nobody senior enough with enough time on the plane to actually give quality OE/Sim instruction? I sure as heck wouldn't want a 2 year CA with 3000 TT giving me IOE and check rides.....but keep living in your barbie fantasy land! Always gotta blame someone for your problems......its never your fault.....
In summary, it is not the 10-15% of senior lifers on a seniority list bringing the industry down, it is guys like you willing to sell your soul and work for peanuts, take shortcuts and even PFT or pay to fly at GIA like you did that are bringing it down.
There it is again, IBPilot. I'm starting to doubt your integerity based on your factual inconsistencies. You claim to be a senior Captain at 9E, but this is the second time now you've posted about flying with Captains. Your tone is obvious that you are a FO, and probably a pretty senior one. From the sounds of it, a downgraded CA.
And yes, ERDude32 has great points. He's mostly spot on. There's a reason why Pinnacle's old contract went from 12 year payscales to the new contract's 20 year payscale. There's not a single legacy carrier with 20 year payscales. There's a reason Pinnacle proposed a staple for Colgan pilots. There's a reason why, despite objections by a HUGE amount of junior CAs and FOs, the union tied the bonus distribution method of TA#1 to solely W2 wages. The answers to all these predicaments involves the words 'lifers' and 'seniors.' They are the reason all of the above happened like the way they did.
"Sell your soul, work for peanuts, take shortcuts, PFT, etc."
Guess what, that was the majority of Pinnacle's situation hiring after the 9/11 increase of RJ growth. The #1 source of pilots was Gulfstream. Gulfstream put out almost 550-600 pilots to NWA Airlink through its program. Who in their right mind would come to Pinnacle at $18/hr when Skywest, Eagle, and Comair were hiring at far, far better rates. Because Pinnacle was growing like crazy, and the 1999-contract-for-jets ensured that they wouldn't be making slave wages for anything longer than 12 months to 2 years max. This ended up being the case for everyone hired through 2006. Now sure, some came to 9E for its particular bases, but lets not pretend that this place was some sort of holy gospel of the regional industry. And speaking of PFT, wasn't Express I a PFT operation in the 80s or 90s?