As funny as it is going back and reading this post to find what it began as to what it has become ... I'm going to take a crack at resurrecting the original topic ...

Colgan just posted a memo answering the burning question of why so many of our first officers are not upgrading, and rather the junior Beech street captains are able to transition to captain on the Saab ... for FINANCIAL purposes only ... they were certain that if they downgraded those street captains to FOs on the Saab they would mostly all resign ... creating drastically increased training costs.

So I guess that whole "we are taking pilots by SENIORITY order, and that includes street captains" thing doesn't apply here ... just fantastic news for the FOs that have plenty of seniority and time to upgrade, yet cannot because of the bottom of the barrel street captains that need to transition to a captain slot so we don't lose them and create more training costs...

On the bright side though ... "we are in talks with ALL of our code share partners of operating our Saabs and Qs out of several different cities ... It is confirmed that we will be getting 15 Next Gen Qs beginning in 2010 ... so with these two situations comes room for more upgrades and more growth ... I can count on one hand the number of regional airlines growing right now ... keep up the hard work and understand that this decision did not come lightly, and we understand the frustration many of you are feeling currently ... fly safe"

... I love memos ...

I'm pretty sure if we had ALPA this would never have happened ... then again, from the other side of the blocks, I'd rather be trying to keep us afloat as well with just about every regional airline furloughing right now ... This is one situation where I would NOT want to be in management's shoes

Let the venting/*****ing/cursing begin!!