Sputnik

Why is Colgan changing names?

pa28dakota

I recently interviewed at Pinnacle (got an offer too). I met someone in one of the current training classes and they confirmed that they have some collegiate lower time pilots in their class that bypassed the interview. I guess the true test will be for them if they can hack it through training.

As for Colgan, Pinnacle Corp. is having all colgans pilots and aircraft absorbed into Mesaba. When the dust settles, Pinnacle Airlines will be all jets and Mesaba will be all turboprops with all the pilots from both colgan and mesaba. Very soon the Colgan name will be a thing of the past!

-W

NoBeta

Sometimes it's the only way to change the face of bad publicity. "Two weeks and Two bucks". very sad.......

Av8tion

They should be ashamed at themselves that they're letting in people new to the industry without an interview when there are still those of us who have been furloughed from 121 carriers who still don't have a job yet.... where's MY class date offer? for that matter where's my interview call???...

vtx531

I completely agree. Did you apply?

Av8tion

I have a current airlineapps application.... if someone who works there wants to help out... tell them to send me a class date offer

BigBallzMagee

Soooo tired of hearing about the 300 hour wonder crap....I came to Pinnacle with under 300..Along with 2/3rds of my class who are all still here...Have been here over 3 years and have enough time for upgrade now. Never had a sense of entitlement. Never failed a checkride or line check. Have been told numerous times I'm a good stick from the very start. Have made or helped make decisions that have saved captains a$$es on multiple occasions. Are you serious???? Some of our worst pilots are the salty old dogs with tons and tons of hours that either don't care or just get complacent. A 300 hour guy or a 1000 hour guy is just a number when starting out for the first time in 121....behind the plane either way, but the fundamentals are there or aren't regardless of the slight difference in time. That's on the individual. A pilot is a pilot by that point. Lots of the junior Captains we have were Gulfstream guys with low time when they started and I feel safer in the cockpit with any one of them over these nameless senior guys we've all flown with who have a$$ loads of time and experience but make stupid decisions or forget stuff left and right. Lots of our FO's who were prior airline or Military and had thousands and thousands of hours are horrible pilots...Heard this from numerous Captains. So like I said it's all about the individuals piloting ability and decision making and not an arbitrary number....

Windsor

Thats all well and good that you 200 hour wonder pilots are now in the position to upgrade. But having flown with low timers from both seats, I'll take the guy thats been around the block over a low timer any day. My ranking of who I want sitting next to me,
1. Freight dawgz
2. Military
3. CFI/UND/Riddler
4. Corporate
5. Gulfstreamer
6. Jet U'er

This list is only based on prior flying experience. I've flown with all of them and this is just my opinion. Sure there are some streamers and U'ers I like flying with, but overall they seem to lack a depth of aviation experience flying outside the spoon fed, watered down, relatively easy part 121 flying we do. Personally, I think everyone should fly some part 135 single pilot ops before they come to the regionals, but why do the hard thing when a job a Pinchanickle is virtually assured by one of these "direct entry" programs?

Andrew_VT

It's not even the low flight time that ****es me off about this...it's the no interview thing. It's a lot easier to simply not hire someone for things like abrasive personality, poor hygiene, social misfits, megalomania, than it is to 'weed them out' after the fact. This no interview thing is going to come back to bite them in the butt when they're paying their lawyers tons of money to back up their 'weeding out' decisions.

I see this as nothing less than a prime example of Pinnacle managements notoriously flawed logic rearing its head and changing the Mesaba culture (in this case our hiring department) for the worse. I can't say the Pinnacle pilots didn't warn us about this.

I'm not saying the hiring department needs to be overly picky, but they need the ability to interview and weed out even just 5% of these guys.

Al Czervik

Agree 100%