Mesaba Junior Bases
 

Anyone know where new hires are going and on what equipment? I understand it's probably confusing with the new contract details. (sorry if already discussed)

New hires are going Saab LGA

How soon could you bid out of LGA to DTW?

Once we have an award from bloch we will all have the answers. It revolves around any conditions and restrictions within the award.

747... Hkg.

Ahh.. Was that bid choice 37? So many choices... I wonder about the commute... But it is a REALLY big shiny jet...

Yeah, but it won't pay as much as the 900 until year 5.

Do they have a 340 MSP base?

New outstation base: HAV


Just remember, it's only a turboprop.

Yes, traditionally the most senior at Mesaba. After the integration.. who knows.

Why do you prefer Mesaba over PNCL or Colgan? They will be identical companies.

And from what I understand, Mesaba is the only entry point for hiring now.

That is exactly it, I only assumed it would all be one when the time came anyway.

Negative, Pinnacle is still hiring.

Pinnacle is still hiring, but Mesaba is the point of entry, they have to go through Mesaba to get into a 9E aircraft.

They did this because XJ was turning people down and then they would go to 9E and get hired, Corp didn't want this happening anymore.

What I was told at HQ anyway.

The guys interviewing should know.

When was the last time someone was interviewed in Memphis?
Or Houston for Colgan?

XJ had interviewees everyday last week that I saw.

i can't answer your exact question, but i know some interviewees at mesaba in MSP were offered a colgan class. maybe that helps?

That does help, and if someone was offered 9E after interviewing in MSP, mystery solved.

I just finished a Colgan class. We did indoc in Memphis, but everyone in my class interviewed in Minneapolis. A recent 9E hire would have to confirm but I believe their interviews are in Memphis.

As far as I understand it, there was one Colgan class behind mine, and then everything from here on out was supposed to be Mesaba classes. This was before though, when the Colgan planes were getting moved onto Mesaba's cert. Now that it's the other way around I'm not sure if their plans have changed.

I have a close friend with a 9E class date in July. The issue at 9E is FDX took half the department in a week... We have been cancelling a ton of flights solely on crews..

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. :eek:

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

a ****load of Milwaukee's Best. ;)

I can do better than that!

If Mesaba is hiring into Colgan, then why are they advertising different mins.? Or is 600/50 really the current minimum across the Pinnacle Airlines Corp. now?

No, each certificate still has its own insurance minimums.

Or congressional imposed minimums in Colgans case.

Case in point, Mesaba started hiring guys with less than 100 multi without telling Colgan. When my class showed up, they arranged us into equipment by total time, the top 12 highest total time going to the Q, the bottom 6 in the Saab. Then it turned out one of the guys they put into the Q didn't have 100 multi so they had to pull him out and put him in the Saab. There seemed/seems to be a lack of communication between the two departments.

Pinnacle still interviews for Pinnacle and Mesaba interviews for Mesaba and Colgan. The plan is to centralize pilot hiring under the "Corp" banner at some point in the future but I wouldn't expect it to happen until the management of Pinnacle Corp and all its subsidiaries are consolidated into the new office building in downtown Memphis and the MSP offices are closed down.

I know this was how they were doing it, but I've been told everything is going through XJ now.

I don't know if it true or not, but when was the last time someone went to Mem for an interview?

9E/9L MOU Pilots
 

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Last week I think... I don't think what you are hearing is right overall. Maybe for the Mesaba/Colgan side though.

Probably, it makes sense though to get it down to one way in as soon as possible.