Originally Posted by submachXJ

Just to add some people have heard we hired street captains late last year. This was because the new FO's at the company could not upgrade due to time and experience. Experience is what they judged themselves because they had not been through a whole year of seasons and were advised to wait. The ones we hired off the street all mainly had 121 time. And as of the more recent awards they are not even senior enough to bid captain right now. Although they stay captain because they were awarded it at some point.

Back to where I was going. In spring 2007 and early 2008 we went from 500 pilots to 1000 pilots. All those hired in spring, summer and fall 2007 are now ready to upgrade or close to it so someone coming new to Mesaba could expect to wait a while to upgrade. We sit at 1100 pilots today and are still hiring.

Now that is the big question why are we hiring? We started hiring at a time when these people hit the line most airlines are pulling down there schedules. And not just a few, September we added 54 cleaned out the pool in the first class and this month looks to add between 30 and 45 with continued hiring for a while. So if this keeps up maybe upgrade will not take that long. They are hiring for some reason but as of yet no one knows why. Last time we hired like this we doubled are fleet but when we were hiring we knew the reason why in 2007 we were getting 36 CRJ-900's and 17 CRJ-200's.