UAL decided to pull the 737-300/500's in the summer of 2008 because the major's needed to decrease capacity and make flights more full. They chose to pull their oldest and least fuel efficient airplanes when oil cost $147 a barrel and they were hemorrhaging money.

What he said, plus I believe the E170 Jungle Buses replaced most of that flying.

Not to hijack the thread, but I've gotta throw in my .02 about not wanting any more Q's at the regional level... the Q400 is capable of taking a decent number of people fuel-efficiently for short-range flights that would be too expensive for a jet. I have no problem with Q400's going to regionals. The problem is with the CRJ700, 900, E170 and E190... THOSE aircraft are operating flights that could and should be operated by mainline pilots on mainline aircraft.

P.S. Thank you US Airways for keeping the E190 on the mainline side :)

And once again, what he said, plus let's hope they stay there. I'm kinda anxious about the backbones of APA and UAL/CAL ALPA....

Pinnacle is not hiring because all of the training spots are taken up with transfers until late summer 2012. All of the hiring will be at Colgan/Mesaba until all of the transfers are finished. The lack of Pinnacle hiring has nothing to do with staffing levels. It is due to the implementation of 11-09.

This has nothing to do with overall staffing. JFK and DTW are temporarily overstaffed on FOs because some of them will be displaced to other equipment and were hired in anticipation of other FOs upgrading to Captain. Once 11-09 is implemented this temporary overstaff situation will go away. Ask any Captains who tried to drop a trip in DTW or JFK in November if we are overstaffed. We haven't been anywhere near our Captain RSV thresholds for Nov and Dec isn't much better. Pinnacle needed to hire 250 pilots last April to get properly staffed. Approximately 120ish had been hired by August.

Across both certificates we were short 100 pilots as of the 11-09 award, which included parking the Saabs. This information comes directly from planning. Also Delta has decreased our utilization to help with the staffing situation and help Pinnancle create a temporary overstaff situation for the next few months while everyone gets trained. The biggest limitation on hiring is the ability to get new hires through training in addition to the transfers. Right now it appears we are hiring around 12 a month as Colgan classes are composed of half new hires and half transfers at this point.

Supposedly more Qs are coming our way from United, but they are waiting for Pinnacle to get its act together staffing wise before giving us the aircraft.

All of this training and implementing 11-09 will create some screwy staffing situations until we get to late next year and all the training is finished.

Finally, remember this is Pinnacle, and everything is subject to change at a moment's notice......

Also... according to one of the regional chiefs, the extra Q's that we're getting right now isn't for more flying, they're here to replace the ones we're sending to Macon to get first class seats...

At 50-seat regional airline pay-rates. Yes thanks for that.

When the credit drops to 75 hrs a month for jr fo's then you can toss around the "F" word...in the meantime, it's 90-95hrs of credit. Next time think before you ax

you have no idea what your talking about.