Colgan is hiring street captains for the northeast. Did anyone else get a call?

 

Beech 1900 or SAAB 340?

 

Beech 1900. Im not interested in it. Im in the middle of Sim for the Lear 55. Just thought I would get the word out in case anyone has higher ME and Turbine time and wants to bypass the right seat. I dont have any time in turboprops only jet and they are calling. They must be getting desperate. Might be a good get in and get out for someone wanting some experience.

 

Yeah, I can't blame you there. Sounds like you've got a good thing going with the Lear 55.

 

Bypass.... Dangerous word.

 

nice.........they are hiring street CA's I am sure there are plenty of SAAB F/O's that would love to hold CA on the thing...............I ran into a buddy of mine yesterday who was in my new hire class at COLGAN, he hopes to be "interviewing" for a CA upgrade by Sep, or so..............seems the upgrades aren't as quick as they once were.............again two years isn't bad but my buddy who just upgraded here did so in 2.5 years so I would say to anybody that wants to go to COlgan for a quick upgrade..................its better to hang out another 6 months in the right seat of a Quality regional.............

 

I upgraded right at 2 years 2 months here at XJT. I couldn't be happier with my choice.

 

Bypassing guys on the list is not necessarily dangerous in itself, its just reality. What is dangerous is the fact that you will potentially have a really ****ed off F/O to have to fly with.
It has less to do with the bypassing itself but rather than a poorly run operation and industry. The reason that any company has to hire directly from the street for the left seat is it doesnt have enough quality F/O's that are capable of upgrading to move upward.

The good ones have all moved on by the time they are ready for upgrade to ExpressJet or Skywest. There are several guys on this board that have done just that. Its a basic supply and demand situation. In the case of colgan, there is demand but no quality supply internally. It was that way there 10-15 years ago and it is like that again there now.

When you hire 500/80 what can you really expect. Besides a big ego that is covering up for lack of real world flying skills. At that amount of flight time its really unrealistic to expect that from them anyways. They are going to need two good years of line flying to get them ready anyways. Not to mention the maturity of their grey matter between the ears as well.

When they hire a 500 hour pilot and if you were able to fly 1000 per year its still going to be 2 to 2 1/2 years before the insurance companies are going to buy off on a pilot upgrading to captain.

So there is going to naturally be a void left in the middle. Besides if you sit back and look at the industry as a whole, the poorly run companies always seem to be the ones that hire street captains when times get tough. Once in the industry long enough you will get to see the boom to bust cycles and it constantly repeats itself.

 

I agree completely. The reason they have to hire street captains is because they don't have enough quality F/O's and the reason they don't have enough current quality captains or F/Os is because they don't offer much.

 

Are they being bypassed because they suck, nobody will bid it, or because they don't have the flight time to upgrade? Surely Colgan isn't hiring street Captains for their own amusement.