To the OP, With ExpressJet's new pay increase to $40/hr, you may want to take a look at them.

 

You'd probably find your answers on the Mesa thread.

 

I would commute to work somewhere else personally. Mesa's pay seems almost unlivable.

 

Funny... you cant seem to keep your keyboard out of the compass thread...

 

I actually toyed around with this same idea many months ago due to living in Phoenix, ultimately deciding to go with Envoy. I met lots of great people at Mesa and genuinely think most are intelligent, caring and honest folk.

Mesa would have meant no commute, but even still, I went with Envoy due to pay, benefits etc. Virtually everything Envoy offers is better than Mesa. Now, the real nail in the Mesa coffin was that I couldn't, over a two day period traveling to interviews, find one Mesa pilot that said it would be a good idea to come work for them. To me, that spoke volumes. Admittedly I spoke to maybe 6-7 pilots, but still, for not one to say come on over, made me nervous.

Take a look in the Mesa section and read the threads, it is pretty bad. I am not one to think the pilots at Mesa are bad or below standard, but the company has a bad name and reputation in the business and the good people working there have to carry that around with them, undeservadly in my humble opinion.

As for Envoy, I have had nothing but a great experience so far. The training, while fast and condensed has proven to be great. All of my instructors, minus one unique individual for systems, were top notch and went above and beyond to make sure everyone was doing well. The pilots, office staff, ground crews, FA's, everyone, has been great. I understand I have gotten lucky and every organization has bad apples, but so far no complaints, other than the commute, which, sucks.

I so wish that the ownership at Mesa would get their collective **** together because I really believe the employees are great people and it could be a great airline, if properly managed.

 

I would say the nail in Mesa's coffin was the recent letter put out by their Union encouraging DFW pilots to quit and come to Envoy. Another tidbit from that letter was the acknowledgement that majors have a tendency to NOT hire anyone from Mesa. This I have confirmed from more than one recruiter at Delta and United. I'm sure AA is the same.

I would say you made be right choice. By a very long mile.

 

I call total BS on this one. The place you fly has 0 effect on recruiters. I like how you convinently left out WHY they don't hire from them, didn't you ask that important question?? I think the real reason why it SEEMS that the lower tier Regionals look like they don't send as many as the larger "superior" regionals is because they had lower tier candidates who might have had a skeleton or two. I remember when Mesa was hiring with 250 hours. But to say it's because of the company is plain stupid. As far as the union letter they want it to look like the place is crappy so people leave. Supply and demand, the only way to have leverage to make the place better.

 

Envoy was hiring 200 hours at one time also.

 

Na eagle was mostly above 400..

 

As much as I want you to be right, I think MESA is the cockroach of regionals and will be here after Envoy. There will always be pilots who can't get hired by mainline, LLC, or anywhere else due to failures, DUI, or any other reason.

I'm not saying MESA pilots are bad I'm just saying it doesn't take much to get hired and pass training.