Originally Posted by
John Carr
Are you sure you're not thinking of another small group of pilots that paid, and became engineers, THEN pilots at CAL? As opposed to the standard mid/late 90's PFT that A LOT of regionals used?
Because as much as it sucked, as much of a black eye as it left on the industry, it's as mentioned; PFT was more a norm and NOT an exception. And contrary to what Kit Darby used to preach, PTF'ing did NOT hurt careers. There's a metric crap ton of pilots that PFT'd at any one of the various commuters/regionals listed, and it in and of itself DIDNT harm those guys. Many that are probably CA's and various legacies right now. As well as FedEx, UPS, name it.
To answer your question, nope. I clearly remember the Pay For Training scheme that COEX had back in about '99 for a few years. The forums were merciless in their damnation of the pilots who actually paid about 10 Grand to work there. But the newbies that came in all stood firm in their belief that it was a good thing for them because they'd flow up and out soon enough - which interestingly enough, they DID.
I remember that it seemed like a majority of regional airlines adopted that policy eventually, but I was proud of the airline I worked for - Eagle - in that they never went down that route.