Understood. My post wasn’t meant to be a put down on military pilots either, just to be clear. Having said all that, I’ve always envied the training that military guys get. It’s highly structured, highly demanding and you’re getting the training from IP’s that want to be there and want to teach. It’s almost the opposite in the civilian world. You have to deal with CFI’s who aren’t vested in teaching, don’t care about student development and are just padding their logbooks, don’t do any table talk or ground school and just want to ‘go fly.’ And on top of all that you’re paying for it. They’re not all like that but many of them are and it was frustrating when I was up and coming on my ratings. I certainly wish we had a training program on the civilian side that mimics the military’s, but there’s just no way to come up with the resources or funding for something like that.

A lot of times civilians are left to their own devices without enough mentorship or guidance between 0-1500 hours. I had a few former military pilots who were excellent mentors/instructors. One was helping me get my CFII. The other provided some high quality training to myself and other CFI’s in a cirrus (CSIP instructor). He was good. I can’t say that about the majority of civilian instructors I’ve had.

 

All in all the changes appear formulated to ensure Mesa can remain in business. And if Mesa remains in business, they can continue to operate for Kirby as the lowest cost RJ provider.

 

can someone describe what it means in chapter 4 "Aviate Complicane"

"Performance measurements will be based on a Participant’s five years of service
immediately prior to transitioning to United, or such shorter period of service as United may
determine in its sole discretion"

If you dont meet some thing(s) in the compliance list, and they see that is was way past you, say 4 years ago instead of 5, and you've improved since then... they can waive it to 4 years instead of 5?

 

That’s pretty much what I think they mean. For example, 5 years ago you failed a check ride and then a week later or so you failed the re check. That’s too many failures and you can’t go to United. However, you haven’t failed anything since then and your managers have nothing but great things to say about you so they decide that 4 years is good enough in your case and since you have zero failures in 4 years you’re good to go. In other words, United makes the rules and United can change the rules at any time for any reason.

 

Pretty sure Mesa is NOT the lowest-cost RJ provider.

 

Pretty sure they are.

 

Air Wisconsin?

 

This. The book says that United can make the rules better or worse at any time. It also says United can dump the entire program at any time without warning.

 

this is like revision 10 to Aviate. Plan on more changes.

 

Left seat of a C-17 doesn’t mean qualified as an Aircraft Commander. The qualifications are different than left seat for 121. 500 hours is low time for military and civilian. What are should asking?