Questions for Regional Captains and F/Os

P

positive_rate

Well-Known Member
Hey guys,

Using the list of regionals below, please feel free to answer as many questions as you can.

AWAC
PSA
Pinnacle
Republic
Horizon
ASA
Comair
Colgan

1.) Which airline(s) would have the fastest upgrades(approximate times would be greatly appreciated)?

2.) Which airlines would allow for new hires to be based at domiciles on the East Coast(e.g. MA, MD, NY, NNJ, PA, FL, VA etc) either due to lack of competition for those bases or a general tendency for new hires to be placed there.

3.) Which of those airlines are performing poorly and are likely to go under?

4.) Which major airlines give preferential hiring for those airlines?

5.) What is a typical avg schedule for a new hire F/O for each airline?(e.g. 4ON, 2OFF etc)

6.) What is a typical avg schedule for a recent upgrade junior capt for each airline?(e.g 4ON, 2OFF etc)

7.) Which of those airlines have a sound reputation for(relatively speaking
smile.gif
) treating their pilots reasonably well and having trade unions?

8.) How many of you guys have been trained and/or instructed at Ari-Ben Aviator Inc?.....if any...plz PM...I would like to hear your experiences.

Your feedback would be appreciated.

Regards

postive_rate
 
This should be good.

1. Changes every day. My company had 18 month upgrades not too long ago and it seems to have slowed down.

2. All that you listed but Horizon

3. All of the ones you listed

4. None (though I think there's something going on with PSA and Airways these days?)

5. Varies

6. Varies

7. Horizon, Air Wisky.

8. Not me, I was at Skymates.
 
upgrade time...it really depends. :)

Domicile, it depends on where you really want to live. It involves whether you want to commute or not.

New hire FO schedule can be very different at different base for different company. You can be fly 5 straight days or 6 straight days. It really depends on company.

Preferential hiring - 2 of US Airway express operators and US Airways

Reserve - fly everyday(hours may vary). Line - 80 plus

These are what I know. Did not go to Ari-Ben though :p
 
Hey Adreamer, I heard you in CLT yesterday..

I was in the 9E cattle car holdin' short.. :)
 
Delta gives preferential interviews to ASA and Comair... it's in the Delta contract (why we negotiated that is beyond me but I'll save that for another thread)
 
That's a pretty wide-open question. Check out Airlinepilotcentral.com/airlines/regional.html. You can get a lot of the information in a nutshell there.
 
FlyingSig said:
Delta gives preferential interviews to ASA and Comair... it's in the Delta contract (why we negotiated that is beyond me but I'll save that for another thread)
Click to expand...

And Pinnacle.....and Mesa.....and Skywest.....

It's in the Delta Connection contract as long as the regional partner agrees to give preferential consideration to Delta pilots in case of a furlough. ASA gets an even bigger boost since they're the only ones that have actually followed through on that. Pinnacle even uses the preferential deal with Delta as a recruiting tool.

I've said this before, and I'll say it again: don't chase an airline for upgrade. John's already pointed out the slowing down of upgrades at XJT. A year ago, upgrade was non-existant for Mesaba. Now they're hiring street CAs. When I came to Pinnacle, upgrade was around 2 years. Now, if you've got the time, you can upgrade in less than 6 months. Heck, I've been here less than 2 years, and when I upgrade, I'll have people junior to me in whatever domicile I pick. But, that could change at any moment. If NWA decides to alter their marketing schedule, we could wind up with fewer flights and a stagnant seniority list, sending upgrades back to 2+ years in a heartbeat.

Schedules are gonna vary per carrier, per domicile and per seniority number. In short, there's no way to tell what kind of schedule you're going to get.

Lastly, regionals pretty much have no guarantee of stability. Contracts can be pulled or altered pretty much at random based on the lowest bidder or performance, especially in the bankruptcy happy era (which I hope is now in the past). XJT had 69 airplanes whipped out from under them, and they went from a cushy regional contract to developing the maverick "set out on our own" type operation they're running today. Air Whisky is also pretty familiar with having your regional contracts shaken up pretty badly. Pinnacle's finally starting to lose the 15 airplanes to Mesaba that are being taken as "punishment" for not signing a mediocre pilot contract back in March. Where Mesaba's going to get the pilots to fly them, I don't know. It's cool though since we didn't have the staffing either.
 
positive_rate said:
1.) Which airline(s) would have the fastest upgrades(approximate times would be greatly appreciated)?
Click to expand...

I don't have time to answer all of them tonight but I do have time to put it my one sentence response to this one.

There is no such thing as a current upgrade time.​

Any upgrade time advertised or known as "current" is how long it took captains hired XX months ago to hold captain at the current most junior base, on reserve. Any changes in the numbers of pilots hired per month or gaps in hiring (such as many airlines have between 9/11/01 and 2004ish) skew what people refer to as upgrade time.
 
RAH is evil, yes. But you could do far worse then RAH. My friend cant complain to badly theyve been pretty good to my friend thus far, the checks always cash. They are in contract negotiations now, what will come of it? Im hopefully great things, but im a realist. I was looking at the 70 seat captain pay across teh industry (in my buddys Lenth OService) and Eagle makes 1 buck more and horizon 10 more, and the rest are below. Bases acorss the country, fly all over north america, growth on the table, good payscale for 175 (in 86 config), and hiring. So should you not come to RAH b/c they dont have cancelation pay? (get line guarantee with 98.5 completion or some BS like that though)...I think you could do worse.

PS. My buddy has been there 4 years and 1 month and is in 400's out of 2100 pilots
 
Kingairer said:
RAH is evil, yes. But you could do far worse then RAH. My friend cant complain to badly theyve been pretty good to my friend thus far, the checks always cash. They are in contract negotiations now, what will come of it? Im hopefully great things, but im a realist. I was looking at the 70 seat captain pay across teh industry (in my buddys Lenth OService) and Eagle makes 1 buck more and horizon 10 more, and the rest are below. Bases acorss the country, fly all over north america, growth on the table, good payscale for 175 (in 86 config), and hiring. So should you not come to RAH b/c they dont have cancelation pay? (get line guarantee with 98.5 completion or some BS like that though)...I think you could do worse.

PS. My buddy has been there 4 years and 1 month and is in 400's out of 2100 pilots
Click to expand...

Hopefully your buddy will be leaving soon!
 
kellwolf said:
And Pinnacle.....and Mesa.....and Skywest.....
.
Click to expand...

Skywest required senority resignation when I was furloughed so unless they dropped that a year after the last of the furloughs when it didn't matter any more like Comair did then I would say they're not part of the preferential deal (not to say Skywest folks aren't getting interviewed I'm sure they are).
 
positive_rate said:
Hey guys,

Using the list of regionals below, please feel free to answer as many questions as you can.

AWAC
PSA
Pinnacle
Republic
Horizon
ASA
Comair
Colgan

1.) Which airline(s) would have the fastest upgrades(approximate times would be greatly appreciated)?

2.) Which airlines would allow for new hires to be based at domiciles on the East Coast(e.g. MA, MD, NY, NNJ, PA, FL, VA etc) either due to lack of competition for those bases or a general tendency for new hires to be placed there.

3.) Which of those airlines are performing poorly and are likely to go under?

4.) Which major airlines give preferential hiring for those airlines?

5.) What is a typical avg schedule for a new hire F/O for each airline?(e.g. 4ON, 2OFF etc)

6.) What is a typical avg schedule for a recent upgrade junior capt for each airline?(e.g 4ON, 2OFF etc)

7.) Which of those airlines have a sound reputation for(relatively speaking
smile.gif
) treating their pilots reasonably well and having trade unions?

8.) How many of you guys have been trained and/or instructed at Ari-Ben Aviator Inc?.....if any...plz PM...I would like to hear your experiences.

Your feedback would be appreciated.

Regards

postive_rate
Click to expand...

Just out of curiosity: Are you a career changer? If so, what line of work were you in before?

One more curious question: How old are you?
 
I know this is off-topic, but a buddy of mine just got hired at Republic and offered me a job there. Is Republic really going under or what?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top