Sniper

As far as ALPA taking a role in flight schools: for the record, the Farmington Mesa program is perhaps the only flight school ever to see the president of ALPA speak to its students in support of an ALPA pilot group. Duane Woerth (at the time, the sitting President of ALPA) went to Farmington in late 2002 to discourage the students from accepting employment with Freedom Airlines, at the time a non-union airline set up by Mesa Air Group to undermine the pilots of Mesa Airlines and Air Midwest Airlines (like GoJet currently does with the pilots of TSA). About 3-4 months later, the Mesa ALPA pilots ratified a contract capturing Freedom Airlines on their seniority list, as well as integrating the pilots of CC Air with seniority, whom Mesa had also furloughed in a situation similar to what's now going on @ Midwest and Republic (buy the airline, replace the pilots with your own lower cost ones). It is for this contract (captured an alter-ego, offered integration to fellow ALPA pilots) that Mesa pilots were then berated for on internet forums, ironically often by pilots who often weren't even in the industry @ the time of signing.

Don't know what you're referring to here, but, on the surface, sounds like a good idea to me. What's stupid is putting unqualified pilots into the flight deck; the ATP requirement is just one method of trying to eradicate this, though it will weed out a small minority of excellent pilots with low time, pilots like the 500 hour guy 'The Duke' flew with. Airlines hire future Captains, plain and simple. If you can't pass a PIC type rating in the aircraft you will soon fly, why should you even be in the right seat? Many major airlines type all their crew members from the outset, though often b/c the ICAO requirements for both pilots to have PIC types necessitates it. While learning on the job a bit is understandable, if you can't demonstrate the knowledge, skills, and leadership to command the aircraft @ the beginning of your employment, perhaps you should be forced to surrender your seat to someone who can, while you go back to piston singles and polish your skills (if this resulted in many regionals having a hiring crisis, then that only proves the point that many of their FO's were never qualified in the first place). 'Career FO' should be a position based on QOL choices made by the pilot, not on a training department assessment that the pilot is unfit to command an aircraft (but is somehow fit to command an aircraft if the Captain is incapacitated?). In my mind, all pilots flying for the airlines should be fit to command the aircraft as soon as they are off their first IOE @ the airline, though I'm not naive enough to believe this will even come true.

If this is some kind of 'regional scam', busting pilots on purpose, then fine - who are we talking about? But, then again, why would anyone seek employment with a company known to do this?

Sorry for the thread drift. The Farmington program produced good pilots from what I'd heard from Mesa Training Department contacts in the past. Too bad that the program is going away. Perhaps that only proves that the program wasn't a huge money machine for Mesa, but was rather only about producing a good product (albeit a pilot with little chance of leaving Mesa for a couple years, so Mesa did benefit some too), rather than a place that just rubber stamped ratings or sent anyone with a pulse and a fist full of cash to the right seat. Sadly, those programs are still around. There's a pilot shortage after all, no?