About the title of the thread "that the families groaned...". I have been critical of Colgan airlines for the way they ran their company and treated their employees for a very long time (check my posts). It honestly surprised me that people would come on here and defend this company. It was my opinion that this was an airline who employed pilots who couldnt get hired at other companies or who were so completely ignorant of this industry, airline contracts, and of other airlines that they simply didnt know any better. I am sure there are some good qualified people there but just like in the inquiry you have to imagine why a qualified person would work with a horrible QOL, low pay, poor maintenance, and a horrible company/pilot relationship. A 12 month upgrade is all well and good but at what cost? and now that upgrades are slowing.... where is the benefit?

I am sorry if i offended some people over the past couple of years but Colgan is a horrible company to work for; It has stayed true to its roots and has always treated its employees like garbage while promoting itself as a "family" business. For those that defend this company this should be all the wake up call you need... if not prove me wrong. This isnt a my airline vs your airline thing. This is a truly horrible company that needs to get up to speed or get the hell off the road.

 

at my company captain oe is a minimum of 10 hrs. That is a two day trip with 3 legs each day. If it is during the summer you just "brief" winter ops.

 

I am confused. Are you saying that a Captain who has completed IOE on a airplane is more qualified than a FO who has lets say 200 hours on said Aircraft? If so you are grossly mistaken. Almost anyone who has spent a good chunk of time in the right seat knows what it is like to fly with a Captain right off IOE. Some of the greatest Captains understand this and have enough respect to swallow their pride and let the FO take the airplane when going into a tough situation that they have NEVER seen in that particular AC before.

 

I don't think it would do any good. With rare exception, most people just want the cheapest ticket.

 

I still say the reason for low wages is because of the nature of the business with regards to regional airlines. They are in the business of sub-contracting their services in order to operate given routes on behalf of the major.

While it is admirable to desire a higher wage structure, the economics and business structure of the industry make it prohibitive. I'm sure the dishwasher would love to be making around $40,000.00 per year, but the restaurant would price itself out of business in order to support those wages.

Many routes flown by regional jets today on behalf of a mainline carrier were flown by DC-9's and 737's years ago owned and operated by the mainline carrier. The only reason those crews were paid a substantial amount then compared to the regional crews now is due to the business structure of the carrier. All of the revenue from all of the flying went into the same bank account.

 

I had some long spiel typed up about higher tickets prices, overhauling the FAA, blah, blah, blah...

The truth is that each one of us needs to take responsibility for ourselves! It's not what they should or could have done better, it's what can I do better!

Next time you're in recurrent ask another question, don't push to get out 30 mins early. In sim ask the sim instructor if you/he could replacte or demostrate some situation or secenrio after your sim session. Take your time to educate your fellow lower time pilots about what it means to acutally learn something rather than to "knock it out".

Especially those of us that were instructors. We all know the FAA writtens are a joke, but find a way to use the requirement to push your students to really learn. Have them understand their aircraft systems, FARs, limitations, what a stall is and that you're really teaching them stall recogination and recovery, not how to stall an aircraft.

Screw teaching to "minimum standards", screw the "PTS"! Push yourself and take personal responsibility! If we each did that, then we don't need the FAA to set regulations, airlines to hire at ----tt, or the NTSB to find probable cause to be "pilot error"!


Own it!





OO.

 

Not trying to sound surprised by any of this discussion, but...

Why is it that the airlines are the only businesses who when/if their costs go up...they refuse to pass those costs onto the customers? Instead, they pass the costs onto the employees. You've got rampies/gate agents making $8/hour...pilots less than $20,000 (in some cases the FA makes more than the FO)....meanwhile the fat cats give themselves million dollar bonuses.

Any other business passes their increased costs onto customers, except the airlines. What is so damn hard to understand about passengers having to pay at least 2-3 times more for a plane ticket than they would for a bus ticket?

Do the airlines honestly think that if everybody raised their ticket prices (so they could pay their employees an honest wage) that everyone would just stop flying? I highly doubt it.

Flying is and always was meant to be a luxury and it should be responsibly priced as such.

There was a thread not long ago about tipping pilots...I think that would be great. You tip you taxi driver, you tip your bartender, your waitress, your hair stylist....why not tip the pilots?

 

You don't tip a professional. Do you tip your dentist, eye doctor, lawyer, CPA, nurse, banker?

 

If we're 'professionals' then why do every one of those jobs start out paying at least 4x as much as ours.

 

It doesn't mean that you aren't professionals - it means that you are poorly compensated professionals.

USMCFLYR