Pinnacle has no place to sweep 3407 under the rug.

His quote at the end is enough to make you cringe - I'm paraphrasing but "Please don't associate compensation with professionalism"
 
First non sysop poster on the board after it went back up! Welcome! :) :) Damn I'm glad to see someone online.
 
From the Buffalo news link:

As a flight school graduate and bachelors degree holder in aviation flight science and administration I spent $150,000 on my education and have only 230 hours of flight time to show for that much money spent.
Click to expand...

Crikey.

Here's a serious question. In the days before the RJ's, the commuters paid crap and hired (relatively) higher time people. I remember AWAC was 2500 TT and 1000 multi, and that was a hard limit. Yet accidents still happened every now and then. Is the low time hiring just a scapegoat for accidents that just happen? I mean the Comair crash at LEX had some pretty high time guys in those seats.

After all they're called "accidents" not "purposements" for a reason.
 
Murdoughnut said:
His quote at the end is enough to make you cringe - I'm paraphrasing but "Please don't associate compensation with professionalism"
Click to expand...

Cringe, sure. But I would expect an airline CEO to say that. I was more bothered by the lady at the end implying that only pilots trained by the military are worthy.
 
From Wiki:
"The term professional is used more generally to denote a white collar working person, or a person who performs commercially in a field typically reserved for hobbyists or amateurs."
Performs commercially to me means that they get paid, no? How then do you want to hire professionals and not pay them a livable wage?

Scumbaggimus Maxximus
 
wheelsup said:
Here's a serious question. In the days before the RJ's, the commuters paid crap and hired (relatively) higher time people. I remember AWAC was 2500 TT and 1000 multi, and that was a hard limit. Yet accidents still happened every now and then. Is the low time hiring just a scapegoat for accidents that just happen? I mean the Comair crash at LEX had some pretty high time guys in those seats.

After all they're called "accidents" not "purposements" for a reason.
Click to expand...

I believe that that is the basis behind the rhetoric.

Schinpop said:
Cringe, sure. But I would expect an airline CEO to say that. I was more bothered by the lady at the end implying that only pilots trained by the military are worthy.
Click to expand...

Yep. Made me think WTF?! The public, as a whole, know's practically nothing about the airline industry.
 
wheelsup said:
From the Buffalo news link:



Crikey.

Here's a serious question. In the days before the RJ's, the commuters paid crap and hired (relatively) higher time people. I remember AWAC was 2500 TT and 1000 multi, and that was a hard limit. Yet accidents still happened every now and then. Is the low time hiring just a scapegoat for accidents that just happen? I mean the Comair crash at LEX had some pretty high time guys in those seats.

After all they're called "accidents" not "purposements" for a reason.
Click to expand...

This doesn't directly answer your question, but...


In the past, or at least in the past cycle of the industry. There was some reasonable hope of making it to a larger carrier and thus making more money. There were not as many airframes in the regional fleet then either. I would really like to see the statistical numbers on accidents vs operations related to the 90's and now.
 
Murdoughnut said:
His quote at the end is enough to make you cringe - I'm paraphrasing but "Please don't associate compensation with professionalism"
Click to expand...
I agree. If we made that association then planes would be falling out of the sky left and right. I mean for Mcdonaldsesque wages that are paid to some crewmembers, the "conventional wisdom" of you get what you pay for, would be a disaster daily. 99.9999 percent of the time it works out for them.

But the truth is they want the cheapest crew possible, and get as much out of them as they can. If that is janitor pay and ticked off employees, the product will suffer.
 
Schinpop said:
Cringe, sure. But I would expect an airline CEO to say that. I was more bothered by the lady at the end implying that only pilots trained by the military are worthy.
Click to expand...
The Delta [management] captain squashed that one in the hearing. He said that if anything, pilots coming from the regionals perform better than pilots straight out of the military, due to their Part 121 experience.

As for the question of whether competency and compensation are interrelated, the chair of the hearing is onto the regionals' shtick. His closing comments were quite good:

Sen Byron Dorgan said:
I can recall the good old days when leaving Bismark, North Dakota, you were almost always gonna leave on a 737 or 727 by Western Airlines, a DC-9 perhaps, Republic Airlines, Northwest Airlines, Frontier Airlines, all of them flying larger airplanes. That was the good od tays 30 yrs ago. And then we had metroliners, the little cigar tubes, silver tubes that people sat in, and then 1900s and now RJ50s and now, you know, 76-passenger RJs, I mean, we've had this morphing of different kinds of equipment. And at the same time, we've gone from a hub and spoke system that was created by--in their own image--and run by the major carriers. and I understand, it made a lot of sense. You pick people up in a spoke, move 'em to a hub, regather them in another airplane and fly them from one hub to another. It makes a lot of sense. It's the business model that they created after deregulation.

That new model however has also now changed from the network carriers picking people up in the spoke and delivering them, to hiring other companies to that job. Smaller companies, in many cases. And companies in which they'll fly smaller, perhaps right-sized airplanes in some cases, and carriers that will be paying less for their crew and their pilots, and therefore, if one half of the flights that take off from airports today are with those kinds of companies, regional carriers, who are paying less for their crews in the cockpit and flight attendants and so on, it just leads to an obvious question: Do we have the same standards if we have less experienced, lower paid crews than the good old days, when the 737, DC-9 and 727 would be coming in with only the major carrier flying it?

Now, I understand the business model has changed, but as the the business model has changed, and half those flights are now not with the network carrier, but with some other kind of service, the question I think that we ask and I think the FAA has to look at, is: Are there diminished standards? Is there equivalent capability? Do we have as a passenger, a right to believe believe that behind the cockpit door represents the same capability, same experience, same professionalism and so on? And I'm not by asking the question diminishing a lot of good people that fly; I see, I mean, I fly on a lot of these airplanes, I get off some of them and I look in the cockpit and think, holy cow, I mean, is that person out of college yet? A rather young pilot. But I'm the last person who should be saying that because I'm, I was selected by a goveror at age 26 to serve in a constitutional office. So I understand you can be young and professional and do a great job. I understand all that. I'm just saying that the way this whole system has been created in recent years is the creation of a regional system that pays less and flies smaller planes, and the significant question I think Senator Begich, I and others ask is: Has the FAA and have standards kept up so that a passenger boarding that plane with those markings can feel it is boarding the plane with the same kind of experience as exists on a network carrier's plane. That's part of the discussion about all of this that we've had with the FAA and with your carriers.
Click to expand...
It's pretty apparent he and others believe the answer to that question is "no".
 
I think the PCL guy there was a professional D-Bag.

What he's doing is wishing in one hand and crapping in the other. "Hey, if we would have known this guy had failed checkrides, then we wouldn't have had him in the seat, that being said, we're not really willing to pay for guys who don't have any failures, or are more experienced."

ARGH!
 
My regional didn't force me to work for it. I don't think anyone here was forced to work at a regional. We can complain (I do) about pay but to be honest we all did it voluntarily with the hope of the upgrade to make OK money and a shot at the majors.

We are upset but only have ourselves to blame for taking these jobs. When we complain about something we aren't forced to do we kind of come off a little teenage-ish and whiney.

I was called to interview at a lot of companies, Colgan being one. I chose not to go. Sometimes I wished I had gone for the quick upgrade but I chose not to go mostly because of the history of bad pay, QOL, mx, and working conditions. When people complain about working there all I have to say is "you knew what you were getting into". Same for me when I chose the particular company I did (a regional). If the airlines really are attracting sub par pilots we have to look in the mirror and point the finger.
 
wheelsup said:
If the airlines really are attracting sub par pilots we have to look in the mirror and point the finger.
Click to expand...

:yeahthat:

Until people EN MASSE say, I am not working for the wages you are offering, wages will not go up.

Why would they? If you're a bean counter and you know you can get a person to perform a task for x dollars, you're going to hire a person for x dollars, not x+y dollars.

Now, if people start saying "take this job and shove it, I ain't working here" because you're not willing to pay me jacksquat, then wages will go up.
 
"Do not equate professionalism with competency and pay"

Sick. I hope he realized that with just that sentence he clearly illustrated the entire regional airline problem.
 
wheelsup said:
My regional didn't force me to work for it. I don't think anyone here was forced to work at a regional. We can complain (I do) about pay but to be honest we all did it voluntarily with the hope of the upgrade to make OK money and a shot at the majors.

We are upset but only have ourselves to blame for taking these jobs. When we complain about something we aren't forced to do we kind of come off a little teenage-ish and whiney.

I was called to interview at a lot of companies, Colgan being one. I chose not to go. Sometimes I wished I had gone for the quick upgrade but I chose not to go mostly because of the history of bad pay, QOL, mx, and working conditions. When people complain about working there all I have to say is "you knew what you were getting into". Same for me when I chose the particular company I did (a regional). If the airlines really are attracting sub par pilots we have to look in the mirror and point the finger.
Click to expand...

I followed the first two paragraphs, but it seems you kind of shot yourself in the foot if you then chose not to pursue a carrier that had fast upgrades for a little more pay. That fast upgrade could considerably shorten the time you spend at the regional level.
 
seagull said:
I followed the first two paragraphs, but it seems you kind of shot yourself in the foot if you then chose not to pursue a carrier that had fast upgrades for a little more pay. That fast upgrade could considerably shorten the time you spend at the regional level.
Click to expand...
His point was he'd be contributing more to the problem.

He didn't shoot himself in the foot either, he just went a safer route. Bad things happened to pilots at Colgan too, holes in procedures causing pilots to have FAA actions against them, and the company throwing you under the bus as well. A BE-1900 out of Beckley (or was it shenandoah?) comes to mind. That was only when I was there (1 year 10days), and that's just one situation. I know there are a few Saab ALB stories that scared the hell out of me.

There were some guys that made it out in 2-4 years and are happily laughing at us for still being in the rat race right now, others are being furloughed from CO and United.

Maybe you out reconsider, winning in the regionals doesn't mean always taking the quickest route.
 
jynxyjoe said:
His point was he'd be contributing more to the problem.

He didn't shoot himself in the foot either, he just went a safer route. Bad things happened to pilots at Colgan too, holes in procedures causing pilots to have FAA actions against them, and the company throwing you under the bus as well. A BE-1900 out of Beckley (or was it shenandoah?) comes to mind. That was only when I was there (1 year 10days), and that's just one situation. I know there are a few Saab ALB stories that scared the hell out of me.

There were some guys that made it out in 2-4 years and are happily laughing at us for still being in the rat race right now, others are being furloughed from CO and United.

Maybe you out reconsider, winning in the regionals doesn't mean always taking the quickest route.
Click to expand...

I tend to think that winning in the regionals means avoiding the scene as much as possible.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top