I work for Mesa, and just spoke to someone within the Training Dept this morning who told me many of the new CAE instructors employed by Mesa are not providing adequate new-hire training (upgrade included) . . . to the point where the APD's are forced to fail these students on their checkrides.

This explains the recent abnormally-high failure rate.

I was able to confirm this with others (within the training dept) who would know.

Mesa is in the process of moving their pilot instructors and APD's back to the line - and hiring third-party instructors to take their place. At this point, most of these instructors are not Mesa (or even former Mesa) employees - but pilots who came from other airlines and airplanes. In short, the training is sub-par due to this current changeover.

This is specific to the CRJ. I can't speak to the status of the E-jet training.

Also, this does not apply to AQP. There is an agreement between Mesa and the FAA that requires AQP to be conducted by Mesa line pilots.

This is not to say this issue cannot be fixed. I'm sure it will eventually, as it should. However, in the meantime, I would steer clear of Mesa until they get this straightened out.

I'm not speaking as an employee here - but as a concerned fellow pilot. If I were trying to choose which regional airline to fly for, I would most definitely want to be aware of this. One could potentially be an excellent and proficient pilot - but still inadvertently be set up for failure through no fault of their own. The stakes are too high to go into training unaware of this.

If you're currently in training for the CRJ, and about to go to the sim . . . it might be wise to find out exactly who your sim instructor will be. More specifically - what is their background? If they have no CRJ experience - nor any time at Mesa - it might be time to pull out of training for awhile.

If it were me - in a future interview with a career airline, I'd much rather explain why I backed out of training at Mesa . . . than try to explain a checkride failure that wasn't my fault.

Mesa's APD personnel are aware of the problem, but are unable to do anything about it. At this point, their only choice is to fail the pilot on the checkride (they obviously can't give a do-over because of the sub-par training).

The debate regarding why this was allowed to happen is probably best left for another thread.

I have nothing to gain by posting this, so please don't read anything more into it. As previously stated - if it were me, I'd want to know this information. I don't want to reveal who I spoke to - nor their current positions - so as not to allow anyone on this site to identify them. They were very adamant to me about remaining anonymous - and understandably so. They're trying to remain professional under very difficult (and unfortunate) circumstances.