Pinnacle, Mesaba or Skyway for a MKE guy
 

I was recently turned down at a SkyWest interview and was looking for other possibilities for a Milwaukee guy. Right now, I may go someplace to gain some 121 experience to make me more marketable to Skywest in 6 months, but I may decide to stick around if I really like it. Skyway was my first thought since it is local, but I hear that Skywest has some reservations about taking employees away from Midwest.

I was also looking at Pinnacle or Mesaba since their bases are an easy commute from MKE. What would you do in my position? I am also considering Republic. How easy would it be to get an ORD base for a new guy. Right now, I’m at around 1800 and 200 hours with most of my experience in flight instructing.

I don't know about Mesaba, but Pinnacle's pilot group is a great bunch of people, at least in DTW, not really sure about the other bases. I have only flown with a handful of people from Minny and Memphis. I haven't had any problems with anyone that I have flown with. I have only been here 6 months, but that is a pretty good track record so far. We are in contract negotiations, who knows when we get a new one, I haven't really heard any updates. FO pay sucks, but the upgrade is a quick one. So it pays off in the long run. Upgrade time is basically how long it takes you to get to company mins. With your kind of time you could probably upgrade in about 18 months. Who knows, maybe less. We need captains bad and the mins were just lowered to try and combat that problem. Management sucks, but what regional airline doesn't have a problem with that.

Mesa. :rolleyes:

Skyway's 1900 upgrade would be almost immediate. You'll learn to fly as there is no autopilot, but the upgrade is a lot of responsibility with such little airline experience. Understand that if you don't read a NOTAM correctly out of a twelve page WX packet during a ten minute turn and launch to a closed airport you might take a serious set back in your career trying to fast track yourself to 1000 hours PIC. The Dornier 328JET is fun to fly. The pay is bad, close to if not the industry's worst. However, probably quite livable if you are in MKE and can live mostly free. There is little or no time on reserve right now for new hires. Now the bad... there is a reasonably good chance (read certain) that you will be furloughed when the Beech leaves. The latest word is it leaves in January. That means the upgrade is gone too, you don't have a 1000 hours and you get recalled to sit reserve as a 328 FO. Staffing should then come down to about 150 pilots, including both Capt. and FO positions to staff the 12 Dorniers. That estimate is being generous I think. If you want to end up at Skywest, do not go to Skyway as there is undoubtedly some badness going on in the way of an arrangement to not hire Skyway pilots at Skywest due to the new Skywest contract. (Good pilots with excellent experience are not getting hired even though Skywest can't staff in MKE.) What else? The company is imploding, schedules are terrible, people are leaving in droves, there is a merger with Airtran that is most certainly going to happen which could leave you in the street or flying a 717, if no merger happens perhaps Skywest does all the Skyway flying, the DO was retired (fired) because of the staffing issues, fleet manager and flight standards Asst. Chiefs left suddenly for Jet Blue, most of the training department has left for Midwest or Jetblue so expect a new instructor to get you through training, Midwest has put a hiring freeze on the pilot group to prevent attrition. Moral is depressingly low. Skyway is a gamble to say the least. Perhaps you should look up "Skywayed" in the urban dictionary to get a true feel for the company. Use it in the sentence, "You might get Skywayed along with the rest of a good pilot group."

Mesaba appears to have the full support of NW. Saab upgrades seem to be running 6mo - 18 mo depending upon how soon you get on. You can still make it in on the first half of the expansion which I think is probably wise if you want to have a decent quality of life and forward career movement in a timely manner. The company is a class act; I guess they finally did replace the carpet over at the Skyway HQ. But, Mesaba's HQ is truly a state of the art operation. Better attitude, better managed, some 18 CRJ200s coming from Pinnacle, 36 CRJ900s. Lots of growth and a quality training department. Minneapolis tends to be a senior base. However, DTW and Memphis are relatively easy commutes from MKE as well.

Pinnacle. Really? There are some really good people working there, but that is the case every where. No offense, but really?

While I haven't heard anything specific, it is VERY likely that Skywest has either a formal or informal agreement not to poach pilots from a Midwest affiliate. So if you want to keep your Skywest options open, you might want to avoid Skyway.

Very well said......thought you the pilots are some of the best to work with. SkyWest guys have their high heads cause they are newer guys flying jets..ooo...their MKE based FAs are a joke too.

I guess I forgot about Skywest. Not that I mind pilots taking other pilots' flying. If you want to go to Skywest go right ahead. There are just some things that a person will never be able to convince others of no matter what. Blind sheep...

On another note, what is up with those FAs? Just fricking weird, the whole lot of them.

The SkyWest FAs at MKE are just FAKE! They walk around with this attitude that you know can't possibly be true and they are expecting us to bend over backwards for them...mm..yeah no. They especially don't like it when us, the rampers tell them to told the passengers on board until we're ready. This past week we had a deadheading FA go off on us because we told her that her crew bags (ala express bag) wasn't in the bin.*

*She was standing right next to it as her bag was on the bottm shelf of the express bag cart.....and she wasn't blonde either.:confused: :cool:


Last tuesday there was a new FA, this time a guy, and he basically took the paperwork from me, pax list and load slip, ok..I figured he was going to give the pilots the load slip. I was wrong, I came up into the cockpit 10mins later to see if the crew was done with the paperwork, the dang FA kept the load slip! Then when I confronted him about it...."What's a load slip??" At least our FAs know what a load slip is.:rolleyes:

I hope that you are kidding

I talked with a friend who is a ramper/gate agent in MKE, and he told me that even with the initial problems with their block times SkyWest's performance is still leaps and bounds above Skyway. I'd reapply with SKW in 6 months.

We don't have cross trained CSR at MKE. Say what you want to hear or be told but they are getting to be a pain in the butt because we're understaffed to support them, they are always having to swap crews..go figure and they never are in gear to get out early, they are always barely on time, never early. I don't know whether it's a company policy but they the pilots need to get all the but the checklist items done up to "Before Start". Every flight I push, they are always starting from the very first checklist item after they close the door.

After you get a clue, pay a little more attention! It takes no time at all to set up an RJ, you hear something different in your headsets and you jump to conclusions. 80% of the time we're delayed becuase you guys can't get the bags on fast enough or your Pax count is wrong; remember addition isn't that hard! Once the door closes and before push we run our Engine Start Checks to the line so we can pay attention in case you try to bend our a/c, then below the line when cleared to start during push. There are checks on the checklist that can't be completed until doors are closed (Beacon, Doors secured, etc) but I don't expect a ramper to understand.

Every a/c is different so don't expect the CRJ's to work the same as the DoJets. The Pre-Start Check is run as the Pax are boarding and takes about 60 seconds.

So Shut Up, brakes released, cleared to push!

It takes all the time in the world if you don't have people that know what they're doing. You can only lead a horse to water, can't force them to drink. I don't jump to conclusions when I know what is going on, don't jump on people that know what is going on. If the bags aren't loaded completely it's because we have 3-4 other flights coming on at the same time with 5 maybe 6 people total, last time I checked it takes at least 2 to load a CRJ (with any speed). Then there is boarding passengers for all these flights. Plus on top of it, our gate is stupid and don't think logically so we can't board if they don't send us the people. The pax count is what the gate tells us, we have no control over their words, remember that.
Bend? I'm one of very few people who can actually push and with skill. We have too many people that shouldn't be pushing but once again, not my problem. You personally may have gotten all your checklists done like a good pilot, but I have sat in the tug, chocks out, door up and they are just starting FROM the begining. I know the start of any checklist when I hear one, trust me, I no newbie to aviation. You probably don't expect a ramper to understand, and I don't either, but as a pilot I take this a little insulting that you think I'm just another ramper. At least twice in the week I sat for 10mins after door close, listening to the entire checklist because the crew was sloooow in getting stuff done. Almost every push I'm sitting for 5 minutes or more with door closed and paper work in hand.
Don't shoot the messenger when I'm stating the truth about what is happening on the flights that I am working.

So maybe they were slow, but you may not know the whole story...They could be on the phone w/dispatch discussing weather in route or at their destination, working through a mech. problem, have a disruptive pax., dealing with FAR times, etc...the list could go on so just like we shouldn't always assume rampers can't add, don't assume pilots are just "being slow" or reading the USA Today so they can see how close to the sched. dept. time they can get. Lots of things go on inside the cockpit other than do the checklist and block out.

one piece of advice...Bad management can make all the negative difference in the world. (see: PNCL)

Perfect... Just keep that attitude going because it is exactly and precisely why Skywest has been such an incredible cultural mismatch for Midwest. It is not the poor performance but the attitude which will sign the end of Skywest's relationship with Midwest. The pilot's, the gate agents, and even the beancounting manager's are getting fed up. Bravo! Keep it up!

...not that it will matter because Airtran knows better than to touch you with a ten foot pole.

My apologies. They are a gate agent for Midwest and have all the operational stats so I'll take their word for it.

You're a bright guy, I can tell by your ramblings. Ever heard of growing pains? SkyWest is one of the only companies that can take on a new code share without having real staffing issues that cause cancellations. Not only that but our relationship with Mgmnt is good, our relationship with each other is good and we perform well above average. Actually we’ve been the #1 performing regional in America for the last 3 years running. Yes it will take us a while to adapt, but we will and we will return to form.

As for MKE, most all of our new hires are headed there so we’re constantly performing IOE which, as you should know, slows down efficiency because we’re “TRAINING” newbie’s! Once they’re fully trained performance will improve. By the time our contract gets into the second year our performance will be that of a regional that has deserved its 35 years of success. If in 5 years Midwest or AirTran decides to bring the flying back in house then that’ll be fine, after all our industry’s based upon code shares that constantly change.

So, if Midwest signed with SKW to make themselves less attractive to AirTran? No wait, that statement is BS in itself, since AirTran came to St George to meet with JA to discuss how SKW could assist AirTran in meeting their future goals when and if they're successful with the purchase. Remember that there is no conflict with DAL, UAL or Midwest as long as we don’t domicile for another carrier at the same airport, doesn't mean we can’t operate for another carrier at the same airport (i.e. We fly for all three at MKE). We operate for both DAL and UAL at almost all of our airports while respecting the domicile clause. Nothing can stop us from doing the same for Midwest and AirTran.