JC145

New hires:

Prepare to wait a year to even touch a plane. The training delays have not gotten better, 9 months from Indoc to OE. You will pass your checkride and sit at home during your consolidation period waiting for a call!

Total embarrassment from PDT’s management on all levels.

skytrails

Sitting at home getting paid. Better yet go find some contract flying to do while sitting. Or go travel because once you hit the line you certainly won’t have time.

Nh114

This is awful mentality...
-9 months of training severely delays building 121 time, upgrade, etc... the experience to further a career. It delays marketability to other airlines.. Yes seniority is increasing, but not experience and hours needed for upgrade/resume.
-I once thought that “it’s a great time to travel as it’ll never come again” ... In fact I was wrong. Most other airlines with modern scheduling practices offer pilots 17-18 days off per month without using any vacation time. Vacation time used.. even more. Sure their contracts have min days similar to Piedmont, but in practice with use of scheduling software, preferential bidding and SAP schedules average many more days off monthly. An average 3 day trip at an efficient airline will credit 18 hours +, 4 day 25hours + .. efficiency..

Just a few things to consider while sitting at home..

Good thing negotiations are occurring.. hope some nice QOL improvements in addition to pay come out of it.

JC145

Thankfully I’m already out flying. Those thinking of coming here should be aware of the actually time like. Not what they advertise.

4thgenaviator

Dude... no.

Heavy Hive

Wow! Totally unsustainable. Can't anyone figure out how to correct this? And why not?
Let's see, you are paid to sit for almost a year to do nothing, then when you finally get to fly, you sit in hotel rooms being completely unproductive as well. Why would any airline with staffing issues build such totally unproductive trips? Piedmont needs new management.

skytrails

According to management we’re one of the best performing regionals for American. That means nothing will change.

havick206

Just a point to note, while seniority may technically increase while waiting for training. Relative seniority remains unchanged because everyone else too is waiting for training.

OversoldCommute

I strongly doubt that NOTHING will change. According to last week's email, the MEC presented a counter-proposal to the company on April 17th. Meaning the company had already given us a proposal. It'll probably take longer than we'd like for both sides to hash this whole thing out, but something will give somewhere.

There's a different tone with these negotiations now versus last year. Last year the company came to the table because the contract said they had to. They did the bare minimum and let the process die with a no vote. Now we're back in negotiations because AAG knows that Piedmont can't attract enough people to staff this place properly, and is willing to sink a little more money into us to fix that. Last year the company's mentality was "give them as little as possible to satisfy this contractual obligation" whereas now it's "give them as little as possible to measurably boost pilot hiring and retention."

We can only hope that the company realizes just how much is needed (both in pay and QOL improvements) to get hiring back where they want it, and that the NC and MEC can drive the point home to the company that people won't flood through the door unless A LOT changes.

OpMidClimax

I like your optimism...

I just don't expect that..