higgi8f6

PDT is what you make of it. We are middle of the road. It's not the greatest but I don't think we are a bottom feeder as well. If you live in base your QOL goes up 1000%.

Being we are all outstation bases, it makes commuting difficult. We do have a commuter clause but commuting adds unnecessary stress. First year pay is respectable and right now reserve is fairly short lived for most new hires. As of today most FOs get the bases they want within a few months.

I was hired at PDT in Oct 2007 and upgraded last August. I'm still the second most junior Captain in the company. Upgrades have slowed because FOs and CAs are leaving but we can't afford to take FOs off the line to upgrade. In addition we can't keep FOs we have to replace those who upgrade.

As for the future of Piedmont, nobody knows. It's one of the reasons people keep leaving. We parked another plane the other night because the aircraft timed out. We own all 32 of our DHC-100 and they are life limited to 80,000 cycles. I think another one or two time out this year. I don't think any are scheduled to time out next year but 2016 I believe will see one or two. In addition our 11 DHC-300 come off lease around 2016. I was told by our last chief pilot that if the operation falls below 33 planes it doesn't make sense to keep the airline side of PDT open.

As for a replacement fleet, again nobody knows. We are caught up in the battle of the American Wholly-owns. Eagle/Envoy turned down concessions for the E175s but PSA accepted concessions for CRJ900. The CRJ900s have started to arrive and the E175s start arriving at American I believe in February 2015. Nobody knows who will fly the E175s. I believe I read TransStates, SkyWest, and maybe Mesa submitted an off to fly the E175s. I know our union has met with both American management and Piedmont management to discuss contract modifications in order to present a competitive offer in exchange for aircraft. Our last MEC update stated company wanted relief on health care costs as well as a longer term contract similar to what PSA signed. Who knows what will happen.

Personally, as a PDT pilot I'm not sure why I need to finance new aircraft when American just posted record profits. But I've also learned to not get my hopes up until I'm sitting in the seat calling out V1 rotate. Over the past 7 years We have been told we were getting Q400s, ATR72s, the Q200s went as far as actually doing difference training during recurrent, and iPads for all pilot. About the only good thing we have gotten were custom fit window shades but they are starting to show their age too (like the planes).

Anyways, I don't regret my decision to come here. PDT is a family. I've talked to many people that have left and they all say the people was the hardest thing about being gone from PDT.

There is a PDT News & Rumors thread that pops up every now and then. It's been quite for a couple days but it has more details about the future of PDT.