Probably the most disturbing trend here @ Mesa over the last year or so, besides the severe attrition, has been the exodus of extremely senior pilots. I have personally known several pilots who have been here for 15 plus years (for a regional, that's fairly senior) who have left for other airlines. Most of these guys, at least the ones I knew, were just awesome guys who taught so many pilots so many valuable lessons about flying the line and surviving Mesa. It's very tough to watch them bail. We're talking about 10-15000 plus hour pilots.

I completely agree w/ Paxhauler85, the lessons learned from Freedom Airlines should not be forgotten. It was a tactic that divided the pilot group and ultimately got our CEO and management exactly what they wanted. The vast majority of our pilots held out, per ALPAs request, and avoided flying CRJ 700/900s until a contract was reached. What was the reward? An industry leading sub-standard contract that ultimately created the low morale and situation that we're seeing today. The ironic thing is that the pilots who jumped ship and staffed the CRJ 7/9s, Freedom A-listers are what they are politely called, are now leaving and getting hired at ALPA represented carriers. In other words, we all took it in the shorts for nothing. All of this, along with ALPA's encouraging the president to sign into law Age 65 legislation even after 70% of polled ALPA pilots specifically voiced their discontent w/ Age 65, has led me to conclude that ALPA is totally worthless. They are all about themselves, and that's it.

I never trusted MAG management to begin with, my service @ Mesa has also taught me to extend the same level of distrust to ALPA. They just totally dropped the ball in my opinion.