How come Big Sky pilots in Boston come into work with unpressed shirts, hair sticking up, North Face jackets, ski parkas and every other kind of non-uniforms item and just generally don't look like airline pilots? Frustrating of course, as a pilot who takes pride in my uniform.

Not that this only happens at Big Sky (it doesn't...I've seen some of our newer FO's at CMR), but I was in BOS a day or so ago nonrevving and a Big Sky guy with an un-tucked shirt (in full uniform) sat up at the gate yapping loudly on his cellphone about how much beer he drank last weekend with old highschool friends with both feet up on the chair across from him. He was also sucking on an empty water-bottle like a baby. What gives? Sorry, rant over.

Where are guys going AFTER BigSky? Are a lot of their Captains going to regionals? I ask because at AWAC we have a ton of guys that come from Great Lakes... and most of them had a tough time going anywhere with their 1900 CA time, so they are here now. Many of them are CA's now... I imagine it was a little bit different a few years back... but where are a lot of the guys going?

Also--Mccube I'd like to take a look at the lines at BigSky too (BOS) if you have them avail.

Not sure about Big Sky, but I know two Colgan B1900 Captains that are now with Continental.

lines in BOS are a mixed bag. Combos of 3, 4, 5 day trips can be expected. This month for instance (a big month for us being 28 days) i have 13 days off with a week off that started yesterday. its tough to say what typical lines are line since they are so all over the place, and we are pressing really hard to have the scheduling process "tweaked" so to say.

thats what you get when the company tells ya theres no real dress code, just a black or navy jacket. there are definitely guys who abuse this and look like complete garbage. what are you gonna do, you get what you pay for? while proportionally you may find more guys looking like schleps around here thats not to say that i havent seen guys look like garbage from everywhere else as well. some people take pride in putting that uniform on and looking respectable, myself being one of them. i cant change the others, but i think completing flights and getting people from point a to point b safely is a bigger concern for us then worrying about what all the SJS'ers think about how we look.

i could get into this and explain to you why a guy would be in the terminal having a conversation on his cell phone, but ill spare the details. needless to say if that was the case about how he looked and the conversation he was having that is disgustingly unprofessional but again i will say im sure big sky isnt the only place you will see that happen. some people just have their head buried so far up their....that they just don't seem to listen to themselves. again i go back to this is what you get when you are in the hiring crunch we are, its hard to convince real solid candidates to come work here when they can go fly a big shiny jet somewhere else.

in the last couple weeks we've had 2 guys hired at northwest and one guy at airtran. last month someone went to spirit while others leave for different corporate gigs back home. the important thing is people are moving on once you get that all mighty PIC, and the PIC you get in the mighty BEECH seems to be acceptable to the big boys.

as for posting the lines, im not gonna do that, ill just say we have something like 30 lines out of boston the have a handful of 5 on 2 off's some 4 on 3 off's some with stretches of 6 on week off. they use a very archaeic(sp.?) scheduling system around here so efficiency certainly isnt our middle name. we dont have sabre or any other kind of system, all microsoft excel (yes you read that right, microsoft excel)

all in all its not a bad place to work, we have a better contract than the majority of places. and just compare our payscales to that of great lakes and gulfstream, you will notice we definitely set the bar for 1900 drivers. second year CA pay is very livable and its a stepping stone not a final destination.

How long is upgrade?

pretty much as soon as you hit atp minimums you can upgrade if your ready. so with that said if you get hired here with 250 hours its gonna be close to 2 years, if you have 1200 hours coming in it could be 6 months.

Yeah, I heard GLA and GIA do the same type of thing.....cool.

Oops, question was already answered.