As for training, history has proven as the training department goes so goes the airline. However, Mesa can’t, and won’t learn this lesson. Cheapen the training department and you get cheap pilots. Fail to provide adequate training tools and you get pilots always looking for shortcuts. Rely on foul mouthed, lazy, unprofessional instructors and you get profane, non-professional, indolent pilots. At some point the continual deviations from standards become the norm, attracts deviations from the norm (e.g., criminal records, multiple checkride failures, Part 121 terminations, etc.), and thereafter, every pilot is the “exception”.

The “training” department remains a farce at Mesa and continues to rely on the Senior League at the Scottsdale Golf Club. These are “instructors” who haven’t flown for Mesa and, in fact, haven’t flown an airplane in decades. These are also “instructors” who we understand show up with a huge chip on their shoulder wailing about their multiple furloughs, pension losses, and bankrupt former employers. So much for Mesa’s 2017 recruitment BS ~ “line pilots training line pilots”. In any event, calmwinds makes the correct point; Mesa needs professional instructors not pilots forced out of the cockpit to fill the front seat in the classroom. But alas, Mesa won’t pay for that.

In any event, the problem is also demographic. For the first time in remembered history, airlines are not only losing Captains because of movement to the majors, age, retirements, disability, loss of medical, or death, but also FO’s, and for the same reasons. This is because the average age of a regional FO is, and has been, steadily increasing and the automatic flow, CPP, and other incentive programs. All in all, these programs are nothing more than a shifting of the Major’s HR department, and their initial protocols, to the Regionals, disguised as upgrades, move-ups, and the like. While keeping the Major’s relatively fully-staffed, it eviscerates the Regionals, but also allows the Majors to play one regional against another. At some point, the human capital economics will dictate they all be wholly-owned.

This is clearly evident with the demographics of new hires at all regionals. However, this coupled with the complete failure of the “training” department at Mesa, and Management’s refusal to address the coming convergence of the debilitating factors will ultimately force Mesa to merge with, or be bought by an airline who can operate a proper training department and successfully integrate it with HR. Management by absurd edict, proclamations from above, and thoughtless policy making simply won’t work but Mesa will learn this the hard way, as will its pilots who bought into the growth and expansion BS, which can't happen in the current environment.

Many of us aviation consulting folks believe the "going public" was NOT to acquire cash to go shopping for another airline [there simply wasn't enough raised to curtail debt AND go shopping]. Rather, it was to make Mesa attractive to a suitor, finally open the books to incentivize an acquirer, and put Mesa on the public auction block, and let someone else fix the mess.