I know 9E is running classes, I'm just wondering if they have finally made just one way into the new company, not three.

 

Your saying they took 650 pilots? I'm sure that statement was a bit sarcastic. How many were really were picked up at FDX?

 

I wouldn't be surprise if he meant our dispatchers and CS.

 

Highney was referring to the TRAINING department.

And yes, I know what the next response is going to be: "Why does a shortage of trainers directly lead to cancelling of flights???"

OK, it doesn't, but stay with me. 9E has historically run pathetically lean on pilots. It's the only company I've ever seen where reserves are not really on "reserve" to handle replacements for last minute sick call-ins, pilots timing out, etc. Instead, crew scheduling regularly incorporates them into their crew planning in advance of any real-time operational needs, leaving very few reservists to pick up the real crunch when it hits.

On top of that, the company, like clockwork, runs short of pilots twice a year -- during the summer peak season, and at the end of the year when *surprise surprise* pilots start timing out for the year in droves, sometimes as early as October!

So.....losing half the training department takes a chronically bad situation and just makes it that much worse.

 

Then the question is how pilots were picked up by FDX?

 

My understanding is that most/all were professional sim instructors, not current line pilots, if that's what you're asking.

 

It's sort of a vicious cycle we're in. If we lose instructors, professional or check airman, then we can't train as many newhire FO's. If we don't have new FO's coming onto the line, then we can't afford to pull FO's off the line to go to upgrade. If we don't have new upgrade CA's coming onto the line, then we can't afford to pull any more check airman off the line to do training. We also can't keep up with the number of CA's leaving the company, and forget about actually increasing our staffing right now.

I think their plan is to just hang on by their finger nails till the summer ends and our flying drops off so they can ramp up the training again.

 

Heres why it leads to cancelled flights. Some of the instructors that went to FDX were pro instructors, some were also line pilots. Many of us line check airmen and regular line pilots are part time instructors in the training dept. We do it on our days off. With as many peeps as we have going through training, we have to immediately replace those full time pro instructors who left and the sim/line check airmen that left or the backlog in training would be atrocious. How do we imediately fill those positions? Pull us part time instructors off our flights to teach in training dept. Then hope a reserve guy will cover it or it will be picked up in open time. With our short staffing nobody can pick up much open time and the reserves are already being used, hence the flight has to cancel. Plus if there's not enough instructors, not as many new hires can be run through training as quickly, so projected future staffing numbers are off to the point we didn't have as many FO's as we need, hence flights cancel for no FO, and since we are short FOs that means no upgrade classes so we also have to cancel for lack of CA in many cases in the regular day to day operations even before we lost that many instructors.

 

It's down to 2 and a half... Pinnacle and Mesaba do the interviews, and the Mesaba interviewees either go to Mesaba or Colgan... baby steps...

 

If you're an LCA, how do I make sure I get you for IOE when I get displaced to the -200?

Lol