Originally Posted by
rickair7777
True statement. The conundrum here is that if you work at a crap regional first, you are undercutting the industry, and making it harder for the good regionals to be good. You are building experience for a better job while at the same time chipping away at the foundations of that good job.
If you stay a CFI until you can get hired at a reasonable company, you send a clear message to the mesa's of the world.
If you fly smaller turboprops, you are not undercutting the jet industry.
Another option would be to work for a bad regional for 6 months or so and then bail for a better company...that way you cost them more in training costs than they saved on your bottom-feeder salary. If you stay for a year they probably broke even on you.
PDT is definately not a crap regional (and I'm not sure that you were saying that or not), and we're a wholly owned subsidiary of mainline, so we're definately not undercutting anyone, but are being undercut ourselves by contract carriers. our first year pay is great and we have a good labor contract, great pilot group, and fly some bad-@ss airplanes. I would agree though that the upgrade times are so long that it is effecting our recruiting, which is leading to reduced minimums, and this gives the illusion that we;re a crap regional because of our low minimums...but if you do your homework, you'll find that PDT was actually THE place to be a while back, and would be an awesome place to work now if we had an upgrade...
come on over. it's a fun job and a fun airplane. just be ready for the training...it'll be a gamble with the kind of time you have I think, becuase the Dash can be a handful, and the training is intense; but I guess people with your times are making it through, so I'd say go for it