What do you guys this of Pinnacle? All jet fleet and upgrade time is less than a year (according to airlinepilotcentral most junior captain hired April 2005).

What are your thoughts? Is upgrade time really that good?

On the negative side it seems their training department may be shoddy, they seem to have a lot of violations, Northwest may pull the plug on them, what else?

Would you apply to them, and if not why? Please share your thoughts.

 

I hate to break the news to you but Pinnacle's upgrade time is definitely not less than a year. I have some friends working there that have been there for 2,5 years that have yet to be upgraded. Sorry.

 

There are people that were hired at Pinnacle in early 2004 that had enough seniority to upgrade to captain in October of that year.

That is a nine month upgrade.

It'd probably be captain in the most junior base on reserve at the bottom of the list but it's captain. Five years seems a little high for people who have the seniority after nine months and have to wait to get to the company minimum of 3000 TT to upgrade.

 

Those upgrades at Pinnacle were happening when the company was expanding like crazy. NWA is (or was before BK) pulling their CRJ's and giving them to Mesaba. Someone correct me if I'm wrong but I believe Pinnacle is done with the expansion, which means hiring just for attrition.

Their mins used to be 1500/300 and they didn't pay while you were in training. They have instituted pay while in training, an employee bonus program, a program to give the sucessful f/o's a bonus once passing their checkride, and dropped the mins to what I believe is 1000/100 but consistently hire well below that. That should tell you something right there.

In addition, NWA recently sent out a RFP to a number of RJ operators requesting bids on Pinnacles' flying. I'm guessing Pinnacle will keep the flying, but Mgmt is asking for concessions...

 

I've been with Pinnacle since April 2005 as a Customer Service Rep/Ramp Agent (working to get on as an F/O). I've heard all the rumors both internally and externally and every single one is different. My personal opinion is just don't listen to them, there are too many "watercooler quarterbacks".

I have a few college buds that fly for 9E now, two are captains, one a F/O. They really seem to enjoy flying the "Canadair Reset Jet" and are overall happy with their job. From what I can tell the upgrade time is about 2 years.

I love Pinnacle. I would apply.

 

I was at a job fair/ airline forum yesterday in which all of the airlines present made a presentation. The gentleman presenting for Pinnacle said they are looking for 360 pilots in 2006, and management has been discussing hiring as many as 500 this year, which he seemed a little skeptical of. They aren't taking any new deliveries. This would mean that it is attrition only, but the good news is, there is movement at the majors. FedEx, UPS, Southwest, AirTran, and jetBlue all said they were hiring large numbers in 2006. Surely this would draw captains from all regionals and help the forward progression of everyone's careers. The only problem is the massive number of furloughed pilots on the market right now. That number will have to go down for us to really see a lot of movement at the regional level.

CitationJason

 

Actually, most of my ex-military buddies are furloughed from United or American, and they are all doing real-estate or temporary military duty or whatever and waiting for a recall. A significant % don't ever want to go back to the airlines, and the ones that do are planning to are just waiting for the recall. It's easier than going through the whole interview/new hire process. Plus you'd have to give up you're seniority # to start somewhere new. The furloughed crowd is not falling all over itself to compete for every job out there.

 

I'm guessing he was talking about FlyI and Mesaba...

AWAC picked up a bunch of guys from FlyI over the last couple weeks. We were hiring a lot of low timers thru the summer but more and more new hires are coming from being furloughed.

I sincerely doubt that almost ANY mainline furloughed pilot would ever even consider a regional position unless it was a J4J type arrangement that put them in the left seat from the get go.

 

I know ASA did hire some DAL furloughs. They were not required to give up their seniority numbers, and I think they felt it would be 4-5 years before they were recalled anyway.
They could make more money being working at HomeDepot, but for those who do not need the money and want to keep flying, it's not too bad. Keeps them current in case something better comes along... such as SWA or JetBlue.

 

Sorry to tell you this, but upgrade is definitely more than one year, especially now since NWA might be pulling some of the Jets. As for the training--It is ABSOLUTELY SHAMEFUL! I went through there training in 04, my instructor never flew the airplane or read the manuals. He could not answer 90% of the questions we asked him. The manuals were full of erroneous information. Once I got on-line, I quickly realized I was working with a bunch of hick Captains (Yes, I was based in MEM). To top everything off---the pay sucked