de727ups

I may be a moderator, but I'm also an active user with an opinion. Sorry you feel antagonized. Feel free to complain to an admin. (HSLD would be a good one, he knows who you are)

I predict your comments towards CFI's in going to follow you are this site for quite some time. I even know a Capt your going to be flying with soon on the Dash in DEN. He instructed at Galvins at BFI for years. Be sure to tell him CFI's shouldn't be considered professional pilots. That should go over well....

mking84

Yes I will be, but not until Mesa pilots seem like they actually want change, rather than to get their time and move on. If Mesa pilots decided one day to say F*&* it can demand change then by all means. Unfortunately it hasnt happened yet, and until it does all they do is appease JO by working there. All of ALPA and the industry wants change, but you have to remember that we have our own issues too, and I decided NOT to work there for alot of reasons. BTW BUD.....im not a "armchair quarterback" I just choose not to listen to people try to tell everybody Mesa "isnt that bad". Stand up for yourself or do you need everybody else out there doing it first so you can join the bandwagon. Bud.

ERJ Driver

We are doing the "F*&%-this" thing you talk about to the tune of 50-80 pilots per month- half are F/O's (and I put off being hired by Mesa for a year while Freedom-A was being figured out in 2003- I gave up about 200 seniority numbers!!!). Mesa is shriveling up like JO's shrimpy limp ____ right now. Go do some research before you slam this or that pilot group. Also, rank generalizations never seem to work, though I agree that Mesa pilots have the reputation of being rank.

Look, it's easy to talk big but it's tough to "stand up for yourself" when a whipsaw is introduced like Freedom-A. And we were not allowed to "stand-up" for ourselves and strike. The mediator would not allow it. But, thank goodness that's behind us and it's been rolled back into the union- Oh, and I don't care about all that business of whether or not we could have won the lawsuit over Freedom-A in court. Heck, we have a major lawsuit on grievances practically every other month that we FLAT OUT LOSE, even with federal court orders. So, whether or not we would have won over Freedom-A is up in the air.

Now, as bottom feaders, remember that we have a suck-@ss contract because we sacrificed so much to get scope. Read this carefully:

WE HAVE A SUCK-@SS CONTRACT BECAUSE WE GAVE IT UP FOR SCOPE.

OUR CONTRACT SUCKS SO THAT ANOTHER NON-UNION, ALTER-EGO AIRLINE WOULD NOT EXIST (Freedom-A).

So, bud, the next time you see fit to criticize a Mesa pilot from your cushy armchair, take a moment to think:

"Hey, this poor slob is the result of a whipsaw... I'm going to buy him/her a starbucks- 'Hey buddy, my name is _____, thanks for keeping Freedom a union shop.'"

RightSeatDude

Excellent rebuttal. I find these Mesa pilot bashers quite entertaining. I suspect most of them are completely clueless and are simply parroting what they read and hear. Anyway, I'm tired of the Freedom BS. The shrinking of ATL was the last straw for me. I'm off to XJT. Good luck to you for the duration at Freedomland.

ERJ Driver

Hey man, good luck at XJ! I interviewed at Compass, but I don't think I got it. It would be foolish to give up a CA slot for an FO slot on a lateral move anyhow...

Cheers mate! See ya up there at FL370...

BoilerUP

Here's something that you obviously didn't learn at Mesa or elsewhere:

"Never miss a good opportunity to shut up."

Its sage advice that, as far as this thread goes, would do you a world of good.

mking84

Hang on a sec hoss....this is getting a little heated. What exactly is it that you want every ALPA member do to FOR you.

ERJ Driver

Naw, it's not heated- I'm good as long as you are. So let's continue. I pay ALPA dues presumably as do you (I sure hope you pay dues there...). But, after you have been beaten down long enough you begin to believe the corporate crud you are being fed and you fall into a (bad) pattern of behavior... they call it beaten child syndrome? I know that as a pilot I have the stereotypical emotional maturity of a 5-year-old , so battered-child syndrome is apt. (Try being junior-manned every other day with 500 pilots junior to you... then assigned below your min days off... then WX canceled with no pay protection... then delayed on the ramp so you work 5 hours and get paid 3... over and over and over... GRRRR.) But I digress...

Let's add another twist to my little story from above to answer your claim that I want ALPA to do everything for me (?) ALPA national wanted us to take this sucky contract that had scope (CA/Pres. whats-his-name-at-the-time wouldn't sign anything else). We were also scared that Freedom-A was where the work was going permanently (non-union): reference the fact that empty CRJ-200's were being pushed back from gates in PHX only to be replaced by 900's- Freedom-A birds with Freedom-A crews. Pay protection for the Mesa crew??? Heck no! We are no longer in the realm of cushy arm-chairs toto, this is the real world of whipsaw bargaining. So, when our negotiating guys made an offer- "We'll take what you (JO) want as long as you give us unaltered scope language and fold Freedom back into the union," JO said, "F-it, ok," (laughing to the bank at the time *see below for the flip-side). Remember, this was also happening in the fresh aftermath of 9-11.

So, the contract was born and the one-time bottom-feeding Mesa pilots were crushed into continuing to be bottom-feeders in a job environment that was/continues to be generally hostile to labor. So, here are a few questions I think are relevant to your post above:

Am I (ERJ-Driver) alone strong enough to fight JO? No.

Is the MAG pilot group strong enough to fight corporate America and the greed of the Bush administration (realizing that the politically appointed mediators will never OK a strike and that we continue to have our asses handed to us in court over legitimate contract complaints)? We have not been, and it remains to be seen what will happen next. Probably No.

Will the MAG pilot group need solidarity from within and support from without? You bet your sweet @ss we will, and we've been trying to generate it no thanks to guys like you who would rather sling mud than be a union brother.

=========

Let's shift gears once again, and rewind to your sentiment that anyone is a bottom-feeder who uses Mesa as a revolving door to "somewhere better". Above, I offered numbers up that Mesa has lost about 450 pilots this year, half of whom are F/O's. Do you know how much a training event costs? Let's see... 1000/hour in the sim, 8 4-hour lessons (if no additional training is needed), 1 checkride and loft. That's about 40K without instructor costs or books, classrooms etc. This year alone, Mesa has had to pay out 18,000,000 in sim costs alone, and the year is barely half-way through.

I figure that the best way to hurt JO is to come here for a year, let your training contract expire and move on to something better. The more often this happens, the more likely management will be... agreeable at the conference table.

inside0ut

I actually flew a 700 today with only 1 mel! Yay!

ERJ Driver

Ya know, I bet JO blames the other regionals for our pilot attrition too! HAHA! I can just hear the quote now,

"In a press release today Johnathan Ornstein was quoted as saying, 'The over-payed pilots at the other regionals are sending a false message through the industry that these kinds of wages are sustainable. This misconception has caused a mass exodus of pilots from Mesa to these other carriers. What our ex-employees do not understand is that they will end out on the street in 5-years. Unfortunately we will not take them back at that time.'"

Insert any number of rebuttals... or just laugh.