Pinnacle/Mesaba(Colgan) Training
 

I'm curious how training is going for the new hires. Are you guys going through smoothly yet or are there still road bumps? i.e., sim schedule, lack of instructors, or whatever. How far out are we filling classes and are guys actually excited about coming here or is it because we are the only ones who called? I got wind of a class of 26 being invited some months ago and only 5 showed up.

We were supposed to have an upgrade class go through at the end of May, on the Pinnacle side, and it was moved to August because too many instructors are leaving. For those of you in the pipeline has Nonconnah addressed this to any of you guys? Do you guys know what to expect when you get to Memphis, or Minneapolis for that matter?

My impression is that it is still a Charlie Fox down there and we're scrambling.

I am in the pool for the next class (Mesaba), however I have no idea what the plan is. Still a lot of uncertainty as to when where and what.

I was in the Colgan 4/11 class with 18 others. There were certainly some road bumps in the form of a lack of planning or communication, as things are kind of between all three companies right now. We never really knew what we were doing next until immediately before. Payroll was and is screwing us the same as everyone else in the company. There were some personnel changes in the training department and things were slightly trending up towards the end. There were only minimal delays between systems and sims (less than a week) and I'm going on two weeks now waiting for IOE. We lost two people in training, both for personal reasons completely independent of the company. Everyone else seemed pretty excited to be here and I know at least several, including myself, turned down other opportunities to come here. My reasoning in turning down others was the new contract and payscale as well as potential future growth in the Q400 in the wake of rising oil prices. I also had a few friends here who said the pilot group had a lot of good people. In my experience thus far, while there have been plenty of headaches, the people I've worked with so far have for the most part been great. I start IOE next week and I'm looking forward to getting out there.

I was in the 4/11 new hire class on the 9E side of things and the folks at Nonconnah did their best to keep us informed though our class seemed to be on top of asking lots of questions to find the information out. Very few bumps in the road as far as training itself though our classes hotel experiences in Memphis were less than stellar.

The one area many of us are concerned about it moving days. We were told we were getting them then planning tells us as per the new contract we don't get them at all. How are we supposed to have time to move to base which alot of us planned to do? My interpretation of the contract is that we can get moving days, but we cant get compensated for them (Section 6.6 Para I). So I am trying to figure out what to do there.

Im currently on IOE about to do my second trip. Im having issues with those pesky visual approaches so I guess thats my own personal snag in my training.

W

situation: snafu
confirmed: yes

"Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss"

Welcome aboard :o

Not sure if this is different with the new contract, but you should get around the clock per diem until you get your moving days (hint hint). I didn't get mine for a couple months and it really helped subsidize my reserve checks.

^ What he said.

If I remember right New hires are not given moving days so this would not work. Unless I read it wrong then I would like to know forsure since I am a new hire goin through IOE and was never given moving days.

Yeah, it came up with us when we had to jumpseat home from Seattle after sims because the company said they could only positive space us to our base. I said something to the effect of "well, you positive spaced us from our home airport TO here, and we haven't been given moving days yet." The response was we don't get moving days and upon completion of our checkride, as far as the company is concerned we "live" in our base. No idea when we were supposed to move there though. I didn't bother looking it up in the contract because I was too concerned with looking up language regarding the per diem we hadn't been paid yet.