Originally Posted by
cencal83406
After having flown with guys from all 3 lists, I can tell you that there is definitely precedent to the top 500 thing. The top 500 at original Pinnacle - lifers, DUIs, busts, you name it. XJ and 9L guys have been vastly superior in every way. No wonder our previously crap training program is turning around - they put guys who worked for a much more fair, non-punitive system in place. It's embarassing to go into our crew rooms and hear 9E CAs laughing and wildly throwing out accusations of Colgan people causing stick shakers - apparently we FOs have to do OE for these guys?!
I am not kidding when I say that the old 9E culture was cowboy. It is refreshing to have standard CAs (XJ/9L) at the helm.
I think it's funny to get laughed at by a 9E CA when I call "airspeed" when he is 15+ knots over assigned speed or Vref and I get a hearty laugh and "are you serious??"
I had one guy who I debriefed instead of calling for a go around on an unstabilized approach (when our visual approach criteria had just changed) tell me that he would have ignored my go-around call and continued the landing. Yup "original Pinnacle".
For Hockeypilot44 and 80 knots, it wouldn't be fair to judge the entire pilot group by a few pinnacle pilots. Ok, it might be several. For some reason they seem to have a higher percentage of clowns than the average. As cesnal put it, "cowboys". Just poor leadership and guidance over the years, and they just do whatever they want. I hope that this culture changes soon, and I think the training department is already making some positive changes. It's just that some of these senior pilots are pretty set in their ways. Most of the fo's I fly with are good guys with good piloting skills. Even the low time ones. Crm, and flight deck organizational skills are lacking a bit. For some reason sharing the atis, clearance, and performance numbers are a strange concept. But that was the way they were taught. Everyone wrote down everything for themselves. Anyway, my point is, there's a lot of good guys here too.