Ya see they were all trained on using the ones without the hose hence I see another million dollar fine comming our way yikes! :/

 

Colgan seems to have fairly good FAs

 

In a long period of boredom I must confess, I read this entire thread. And in all that time, I was surprised no one mentioned the huge amount of hiring that ExpressJet has been doing over the last few months. Hear me out: In Dec/Jan they were hiring instructors as fast as they could with plans to double their current capacity at the training center. There were stated plans to have 700 new hires online this year as well as a large number of upgrades.

Explanations I have heard:
-We were short staffed last summer. Sure, maybe by 100-200, but not to the tune of 700 pilots!

-Attrition is expected to increase this year. Alright. I know everyone is expecting some increase in attrition this year but 700 pilots = 58/month; not likely.

-We are bringing back the 135s! Yeah...7 of 'em...to cover aircraft that are offline for heavy maintenance. Not what I'd call net growth and hardly justifies an increase in hiring like this. Hell, you couldn't even fit 700 pilots in 7 E135s!

-We are trying to scoop up as many qualified pilots as we can before the 1500-hour/ATP rule takes effect and screw the other regionals. I don't think any airline right now can justify the cost of carrying an unnecessary 700 pilots just in anticipation of a rule change. And since when are airline managements that forward thinking?

In my mind, something just doesn't add up. Part of me thinks I must be the crazy one since I'm the only one bringing this up, but who knows? All this plus the rumors of an "undisclosed United Express carrier" taking over the Q operation is enough to make me wonder. I mean...30 Q400s (600 pilots) plus what we were short staffed last year (100-200 pilots) equals about 700 pilots... What am I missing guys?

* This all assumes that the numbers coming from crew planning and the training center are accurate and that UniCal wants to keep the Q400s in the Express fleet. If not, well then, back to square one!

 

While I agree something doesn't add up entirely here, despite the hiring spree we still find ourselves short staffed on some days. Red flag has been up 2 or 3 times in the past month or so. I really don't think XJT will be seeing those Q's at all. Besides, why would they hire and train 700 pilots for the ERJ, only to have to retrain a large chunk of them shortly afterwards for the Q? $$$

 

Whoever gets the Qs will probably pref hire the pilots who are qualified and current in the Q400. That would save a lot of $$$. Rather than hire 700 pilot that have no idea what "Alt Sel" means...

 

The proper callout is "Awe Hell" or "Alt Smell" or "One Taco"

you have earned one tp ! haha

 

TSH is going to create a new airline and hire many colgan pilots to operate a fleet of Qs. It will have costs lower than GoJet.

 

Yeahhh it doesn't really work that way... The more likely situation is the new hire will be doing ioe with an instructor that just got trained up on the aircraft. It is possible that the ioe instructor has 1/15 of the time on the a/c then the new hire... sucks for the colgan guys but such is the way of the industry... good luck to all of you, whatever happens.

I refuse to speculate on where othere regional flying will end up...

 

Regardless, I hope the good news continues for my XE brethren. It's been a rough ride since 2008. I know the branded has been gone for a few years, but that flying was the most fun I had at XE.

 

Hah...yeah, a couple times for a couple of days each time. That's more a symptom of Yoonited bunching all the flying they give us at weird times of the month. I don't know how long you've been here but in years past you would see the red flag go up in April and not go away till September. There would be entire months throughout the year where its red flagged. So a few days here and there doesn't indicate chronic under-staffing to me. If you want my opinion, I think the new schedulers and supervisors in ATL do it to themselves with their staggering level of ineptitude. As someone who is back in the reserve game, I often wonder how much smoother things would operate if they would try to be more efficient rather than deadhead deadhead deadhead all the time.

Short answer? Because management doesn't think that efficiently
IF (a big IF) XJT takes on those aircraft, having guys already on property shortens their spool-up time. If you are just transitioning from one aircraft to the other, training could probably be 2 weeks shorter (no Indoc, no initial CRM). If you pref hire a Colgan guy, he has to go through the whole initial training cycle, regardless how much experience he has in the airplane. So the cost savings are probably not as great as you imagine. The expensive part will be up front in the form of developing and certifying a training and fleet management program from scratch, not training some pilots. And who's to say the Q400 would end up being the junior airplane? If they opened an LAX, SFO or DEN Q400 base, I think you would see it go rather senior. So you're going to have to retrain ERJ guys anyway if a bunch of senior west coast guys bid it.