FSUpilot

yay.. sounds like a blast. at least I have family close by those two bases.. I wont have to commute back to NM maybe but once a month. I will worry more if and when I get the job.

bigscrillywilli

The secondary bid didn't come out because there were no vacancies left after the first round. I don't understand where you guys are going with that one.

On another hand, they announced today that they will take over ground handling in Phoenix since Mesa has decided to stop doing it as a result of bankruptcy. They'll also bid for handling in 11 other cities out west that Mesa had. They are also "close to the end of negotiations to bring another -100 online in March via lease." I had heard awhile ago that they were looking at bringing back one of our own EX planes back, so maybe that's it. They continue to "look at more -300's", but obviously aren't willing to pay the current going rate.

DashGirl

To anyone interviewing I highly recommend that you do not consider employment at PDT.

* Reserve QOL is horrid. You'll either fly your ass off and be so fatigued you'll be a walking ASAP report. Or you'll spend your life bored off your butt leashed to a cell phone that never rings.

* With load factors increasing due to economic recovery, empty seats available from a west coast to east coast for a junior commuter will be few and far between and you have no contract commuter protection if you jumpseat offline. East to west US Airways commuters have it pretty bad. There are very few of them because it is really challenging. If you don't plan on moving out East do not let anyone tell you that a East to West commute is even remotely tolerable. I guarantee you will be nothing short of miserable within 8 weeks. You get three missed commutes per year no jeopardy as long as you've properly crossed 25,000 t's and dotted 25,000 i's - yeah, its THAT absurd! After that you get two missed trips per year then termination.

* We are in contract negotiations and it is NOT going well. Strike preparedness committee is ramping up operations. The company is continuously violating our contract in several areas. Payroll errors are out of control. Company is telling our Union they want a Current Book contract or less. For those of you that do not know what that means it translates to the company wanting to sign a 5 to 10 year extension with concessions for our current contract. The contract is far from the worst in the industry but it is fraught with problems and is concessionary. The sections on reserve rules and training especially are highly sub-standard.

* PDT has AQP for our training program. Though AQP is well liked at other companies it is extremely difficult to deal with at PDT. Training here is extremely hard..period..Especially for new hires. The Training Dept. Mgt is very "old school". If you have even a sliver of slacker in you, if you don't have the AJ squared away super jar head POH and FOM robot cyborg mentality you will likely NOT pass initial, and you need to have extremely solid IFR skills already, they will not train you. I am a slacker by nature. I had to make significant adjustments to my mentality to get through initial. It was extremely challenging. Last few new-hire classes before they furloughed had a better than 40% wash out rate. Essentially we do not have a training department. We have an Evaluation department. Everything is basically self study. Your sim sessions will include little actual instruction. It will be endless repeats of..."okay you screwed that up, let's do it again till you get it right, and BTW, if we don't get through everything in the time allotted you fail." We actually have some great instructors. But they are rarely allowed to actually instruct. The PDT AQP program is structured this way intentionally. Trng dept managers believe in instruction via intimidation. They feel if you are not a natural and perfect Dash 8 pilot you don't belong at Piedmont. I have never failed any training event at Piedmont and I still hate going to training. I'd rather be whipped with a bamboo stick then step foot in the training center bldg ever again! Most pilots here feel exactly the same way...Don't misunderstand me, they are not mean or rude. In fact, they are exceptionally professional in their demeanor and even pleasant at times. But they demand a level of consistent performance from you that would even intimidate an Air Force Eagle driver or Navy Super Hornet jock!. It's a very unreasonable environment. Especially for a low-time new-hire.

* Our crew base structure is not secure. LGA will likely be gone within the next 12 to 15 months. In lieu of the CAL/UAL merger and subsequent acquisition of EWR slots for Southwest Airlines the slot-swap transaction with Delta has been re-submitted and will probably go through the third time around. That means a total shut down of Express ops at LGA and a loss of 12 to 15 lines of flying for PDT. Mgt, claims the provisions of the slot-swap will allow for reallocation of those a/c and a minimal loss of flying overall. However, they have never provided one shred of evidence to that effect to our union. LGA has ceased RON aircraft for PDT. We also lose I believe 6 routes to Mesaba out of LGA effective March 1st with no increase in flying to compensate.

Now, after dealing with all of that here comes the real good news. You have to put up with all that nonsense to have the privilege ( you better be willing to at least make them think you feel privileged) to fly 25 year old turboprops that are literally falling apart that run an average of two MEL's per aircraft on any given day. Do not listen to anything any recruiter tells you. There is currently no, and I emphasize NO, fleet replacement plan even being considered for PDT. We have three aircraft that are due to timeout on their airframes by late 2012 with 7 more hitting max cycles by 2014. Piedmont is currently operating literally the two highest time Dash-8 100's in the world. They set a record every time they fly. We have great mechanics and they do a helluva job keeping the antique fleet (flying avionics museums) going. But fleet reliability is dropping fast. Shortcuts are being taken and the MEL program is being abused by management. Parts are becoming more and more scarce and major mechanical failures, many in-flight, are on the rise.

The future for PDT is grim. The popular theory is that once our sister wholly owned (PSA) has a T/A and signs off on a new contract mainline will merge us. Now if that happened, it would be very good for the PDT pilots in some ways but bad in others. Though job security would be enhanced, PSA currently has, and will likely have an inferior contract.

The second most popular theory, and I think the most likely to happen considering it's the trend with precedent is that mainline will simply whittle down PDT year after year until there are too few Dashes left to continue flight ops. At that point, perhaps 3 to 5 years from now, PDT will cease flight ops and street all flight crews/dispatchers/mechs/schedulers and continue ground handling ops only.

Those two "blogs" are only theories and opinion. Anything could happen. But consider this. Recently I asked a group of three fairly senior pilots in the crew room at LGA how long had it been since there was any good news or growth at PDT.....The response was that it had been about 15 years.

Now, if you really want to put up with all of that, are willing to live in-base, stick it out long enough for the hiring wave and attrition to bump you up to line holder (assuming you ever get there before getting furloughed) then in all honesty, the job isn't that horrible. But movement is nill. Upgrades have slowed and with the impending decrease in flying, upgrades will likely stagnate by year's end with maybe 20 or 30 more this year. New hires won't see any chance of upgrade for a minimum of 5 years unless something drastically positive growthwise occurs. I'm a 4th year F/O, I have no chance at upgrade in 2011 and probably won't be able to hold Captain until the end of 2012.

You would also be wise to consider this: Racking up gobs of SIC time in a turboprop will do little for your career progression in an industry that seems to be trending towards the disuse of turboprops (some are going to counter argue this point so I'll state that as opinion only). In a hiring boom your TP time will get you in after all the jet resumes have been hired. In a time of hiring lull you will be at the bottom of any list to interview. My point is this, although flying at PDT will give you excellent skills and much needed experience, why come here when you can go to a jet regional? This has NOTHING to do with sjs, I could care less what I fly as long as I have a paycheck that amounts to what my skills are worth with a good QOL working for a company that actually dares to see me as a human being rather than a necessary cost liability. I'm talking about career progression here. There just isn't any pilot making top dollar in this industry flying attic fan powered passenger relocation devices. So any of you that want to accuse me of SJS can sit on it!..Think about it!

Additionally, we, we being the line pilots at PDT, would prefer if you did not come here right now. It's nothing personal, but if no one comes to work here crew availability will get worse and worse. Once everyone gets tapped out on Jr. Man's and the reserves are maxed on hours and flights start getting canceled due to crew shortages our pilot group will begin to have some leverage at the negotiating table. Please help us make PDT into a better place to work in the future, assuming we have a future, by going somewhere else for the time being. During times like these being understaffed for us is a good thing...

And no, if you come here no one will treat you crappy or be rude to you other than industry normal average good humored new hire hazing...Just asking you to help us out!

frmrdashtrash

I have to call BS on this one. PDT training just isn't that difficult if you bring a willingness to learn, good attitude, and solid instrument skills. It's been that way for the last several years. If you come in lacking in those 3 cores, you may not be successful in initial. If you come in without them, but develop them in training, you'll sweat a lot, but pass. Likewise, if you are a weak pilot, you will not pass. As it should be.....

There are entirely too many good and hard working check airmen the training dept to not come on here and call you out on that comment. They are there to "demand a level of consistent performance......". If you cannot provide that I suggest you resign and pursue a career that is less demanding.

You are spot on with the rest of your post, but I suggest you look for ways to improve yourself after reading your summation of the training department. They aren't perfect, but not as you describe if you are prepared for training.

DashGirl

Seems to me I think you were just looking to find something in my post to disagree with just for the sake of disagreeing. Because the part of your post I quoted is just my opinion put nicer. I have no beef with our Check Airmen or instructor staff and I made it clear to that point. My issue as well as that of our collective pilot group and our union is with the management of the training department. Two individuals specifically whose names will remain unnamed. I've never had a run in with them or any trouble in training. I just don't care for their hollier than tho attitude. It's the vindictive behavior of the department which turns my stomach. Additional training if needed for a pilot they like, none for the pilot they don't. Forced downgrade for Captains that can fly circles around any of them but welcome to left seat for our idiot captains that only know how to fly a fracking POH...It's a poorly run department..period. Rampant double standards and open favoritism. When they let our instructors and check airman actually instruct, let us review the AQP manual for CBA compliance and fair practices then we can talk about having a good training department.

Let me ask you something, have you ever got one of the good guys down there to talk with you off the record about how they feel about their bosses and how the dept in general is run? All will deny ever speaking out against them, but several of them have major issues with the mgt mentality and total stagnation towards the progressive development of the training department. It's not about demanding a level of consistent performance, it's about demanding a standard that exceeds published standard. That's wrong, period. It's about making your training harder based on your prior training problems, that is possibly actionable. It's about a total disregard to a pilot's fitness for training duty in relation to his or her current line schedule. It's about violating our contract and requiring us to DH on the still dark in the morning first flight out of our base to training when a later flight would get us to CLT on time for recurrent, it's about no consistency in our assigned sim slots, its about paring pilots with instructors that previously failed or special tracked the pilot, its about many more issues that I don't feel like typing out. Can you tell I'm a union committee member, LOL

I may have, "overstated" some aspects, but the dept has problems and they are unwilling to address them. That is the meat of my point.

You have your opinion. I have mine, but I don't even think you can disagree with the fact that the vast majority of our pilot group would lean towards mine vs. yours. What does that say? In a recent meeting between the TD and our union, our training committee chair was asked, "why do you guys hate us so much?"..His response..."Where do I begin."

I respect your opinion. But I respectfully disagree.

frmrdashtrash

I can certainly live with that. I'll agree that the top of the training dept could use some adjustment, but I have to say that the challenges in PDT newhire training are largely due to the experience levels of the pilots being hired. It was that way when I went through 2000 years ago. Those of us with turbine time were hanging out in the bar after class and passed our tests without too much sweat while those without studied hard and squeaked by.

Other airlines adjusted their training departments to cater to low experience, no turbine time newhires. Piedmont did not.

When you go through another airlines' program you'll get to see the true strength and weaknesses of the PDT program.

piper338

Hi everyone,

I'm working on these quizzes to help everyone study for CQ this year, the password is the same the company uses for the training videos. If you don't have it just send a password request.

Please let me know if you find any errors via a PM. I will post the rest as I finish them.

2011 CQT-Flight Controls

2011 CQT-Powerplant and Prop

‎ 2011 CQT-Auto Flight

2011 CQT-Flight Instruments

2011 CQT-Landing Gear and Brakes

2011 CQT-Hydraulic

2011 CQT-Electrical

2011 CQT-Fire

2011 CQT-Air Conditioning and Pressurization

2011 CQT-Ice and Rain Protection

PDTpilotXX

DashGirl! You're back! Or are you...?

DashGirl

I agree with all of that post for certain. I actually feel we more or less have the same opinion albeit mine expressed more harshly.

Overall, it seems like the two unnamed aforementioned individuals seem to think they are running, or wish they were running a military jet training squadron vs a TP regional training program. I've often felt that the primary problem is that it's been the total failure of both of them to achieve any sort of distinguished success in their careers and that they take it out on the whole pilot group. Both of them should have been senior training guys with 15 years command experience on a heavy jet by now. One must wonder, was it perhaps their attitude that kept them here?

I mean c'mon , keeping the AQP manual Top Secret is just plain immature and absurd. If it's a fair policy, and it's a fair program, and it's CBA complaint, then what do they have to hide?

My examples of favoritism I can't really get into without naming names. But I can say that in my domicile we have C/A's that have an excellent relationship with training, never failed a checkride that have no business being in command of a transport category aircraft or even a Cessna for that matter. Yet year after year they pass recurrent. Then we have guys I fly with that teach me more in one leg then I've learned in totality from my TD experiences that just because of one bad sim ride and disagreement with an instructor are constantly special tracked or at the extreme: forced to downgrade. This is a bit of an exaggerated euphemism but the TD wants pilots that can academically fly the perfect sim. They have no use for pilots that can actually fly airplanes. Forced downgrade is actually very uncommon in the industry at large, yet at PDT, it's not. What does that say: We have a training dept that simply has a higher level of standard then the rest of the industry? Or does it say the standard our training department has is too high?

I never left. I've just been in a real bad mood for the last year, no, make the last Four and haven't felt like posting. I'm really not going to do so that often, just the PDT hiring thing made me chime in. I wanted to get the word out to any potential new hire to steer clear of this place.

stoki

Yea I think every post in this entire thread pretty much confirms that morale here at Piedmont cannot possibly be any lower.. or can it?

Piper338, good effort making those tests up man. Good luck.