Very true. Just for your information: The Mesaba flowthrough has been finalized and the initial list of pilots who have submitted their bid to flow or not was posted a few days ago. The names even have the month they're expected to flow all the way through December 2008. The top 50 or so on the list have mostly opted out of the flow with a few exceptions. Most of those pilots are too old for a flow to be worth it to them. But, from about seniority number 100 down to the bottom (~1000) an overwhelming majority has opted to flow when eligible. Just to clairfy, the list I'm referring to only lists those who have submitted a yes or no bid. There are many others who have not given a preference yet. But, with other carriers like Delta and US Airways publishing minimums of 1200-1500 TT with no PIC turbine required and only an ATP written, I'm not sure how many of the younger pilots (especially newer FOs) who opted in will actually wait around to use the flow to NWA. Still, I wouldn't count on using the flowthrough as a definite way to get into Northwest, and would assume that nicholasblonde is correct -- it would be very hard to jump ship from Mesaba up to NWA with that flowthrough agreement in place.

On the most recent award, pilots with seniority numbers in the 600 range were being awarded captain slots on the CRJ-900. If you were hired in the next few months, you'd probably be one of the first group of pilots at Mesaba with a seniority number over 1000 to start with. Movement into the CRJ is going a lot faster than anyone had thought, but there's a lot of factors that go into that such as the addition of MEM as a 900 domicile, seat locks being released for Saab captains to move to the RJ, new plane orders, how many 200s actually come over to Mesaba, etc. The bottom line is this; if you were hired as a street captain, it would be on the Saab (which is still a great airplane). Officially, you'd have a 2 year seat lock, and a one year training contract to fulfill before you could leave. So, to answer your question, it would probably be two years before you'd see a CRJ if you were hired as a Saab street captain. But, you could always take it and roll the dice on getting that seat locked released if you had the seniority to hold a CRJ position and they needed to fill the class. Of course, that's like having one shot at rolling snake-eyes on two 100-sided dice.


Right now Mesaba is upgrading at 1500TT and hiring captains off the street.