Pinnacle upgrade less than ONE year.

[Goose Egg]

I agree with the "wanting to see some stuff" but you'll never see everything... A captain with 20+ years hasn't SEEN everything..

Avatar rocks, eh?

Ok, ok, I'll rephrase it. I want to see as much as I can. But you are right--you're never going to see "everything." There comes a time that you just have to take the experience you have and trust yourself that you can cope with whatever comes at you whether you've "seen" it or not.

...Yeah, I've always enjoyed it.

 

[Lear70]

Pinnacle has an awesome pilot group and some awesome base managers espercially MSP. The admin people in KMSP just awesome and a breath of fresh air. If I am not complaining about Pinnacle then it can not be that bad. I have being on reserve here for 2 years.

First,,, MSP admin a "breath of fresh air"? The base manager especially? WTF? Did GB resign or something I hadn't heard of?

What is an alternate slot?

Sometimes weird things happen and the guys who were slated to upgrade on the final bid can't make it to class (injury of some sort or hospitalization, wife or kids get sick, etc, etc).

There is a list of "alternates" that are the next people in line of seniority who have the minimums AND have a bid in for the position, in this case, DTW CA. If there aren't any alternates, it means that NO ONE in the company BOTH holds the time to upgrade AND has a CA bid in for DTW.

That's usually a very short step from street CA's.

I know of like around senority 700 there are a bunch of people with 2600-2900 hours waiting to upgrade so I predict its gonna get senior around summer and then propbably after that street guys will come over.

That's where a lot of the GIA folks hired 2-3 years ago are sitting. They're just waiting for the flight time.

Any street CA's that are hired are going to sit reserve for a LONG time... and I thought 3 years was a while.

thats what happens when an airline has the choice of a respectable regional airline......and then Pinnacle. They go with the lowballer for all the growth.

Ummm... not really,,, No.

PCL isn't growing. They're actually slated to LOSE a bunch of airplanes if they don't get a contract in place, which I'm of the belief will happen anyway with Compass spooling up.

The CA upgrades and massive hiring needs are due to ATTRITION. A lot of CA's are getting hired at majors and the F/O's are going to places like Netjets or better Regional jobs.

Did I just use the term "better" and "Regional jobs" in the same sentence?

Call me crazy, but I don't think I'd want to be a CA with anything less than a couple years of doing the FO thing. I'd want to have seen everything.

Yeah, you're crazy.

Seriously, it wasn't THAT bad. Scheduled 121 is really easy after you've done any Supplemental 121 or 135 charter work where you have to do your own flight planning, w&b, etc.

The first couple months are a little eye-watering; after that it's not that big of a deal, IF you have some solid jet PIC time in your background already.

 

[Goose Egg]

Yeah, you're crazy.

Seriously, it wasn't THAT bad. Scheduled 121 is really easy after you've done any Supplemental 121 or 135 charter work where you have to do your own flight planning, w&b, etc.

The first couple months are a little eye-watering; after that it's not that big of a deal, IF you have some solid jet PIC time in your background already.

I've been called worse!

Hmm... well, that's a pretty big IF for me, but I probably shouldn't worry about it at this stage of the game. There was a time when I wondered how I could possibly flight instruct without completely freaking and here I am 700 dual-given hours later and somehow I survived just fine. It's probably the same deal.

-Goose

 

[Tram]

I have being on reserve here for 2 years.

Reserve for 2 years??

Were you a street captain or something?

 

[Speedbird34]

yep street captain and looking forward to more street captains hitting the property. Hey Lear 70 much respect from me! The base manager here is MC and his assistant is BS. Outstanding gentlemen they run the show in MSP.

 

[Lear70]

yep street captain and looking forward to more street captains hitting the property. Hey Lear 70 much respect from me! The base manager here is MC and his assistant is BS. Outstanding gentlemen they run the show in MSP.

That's what happens when I lose touch with my MSP contacts...

Good for you guys, glad you got some better mgmt peeps in MSP.

One or two of the admin assistants was pretty cool, and that was about it (not to mention one of them being really HOT, but I digress).

Good luck with the street CA thing. 3 years on reserve SUCKED, and I really hope you get some movement under you sooner rather than later. :beer:

 

[CherryBomb]

Forgive my ignorance, Ive never flown 121, but how bad is reserve? Do you have any sort of schedule? Do you have any idea of when you are on call and when you aren't? Do you have any days off a month?

Sorry to ask, mamma says Im "ignant"...

 

[Lear70]

Pinnacle reserve can change (and does) periodically.

Minimum days off is 10, so that's what the company gives you (don't ever expect more from the company than the absolute minimum they have to give you contractually in ANY area of the contract unless it benefits them).

14 hour on-call periods at "home" in which you are NOT on duty. Big difference, long story. 90 minute callout from "home", which means you have to be checked in at a computer terminal within 90 minutes from their first call.

9 hour airport reserve periods in which you ARE on duty, as you are sitting in operations, checked in on a computer, in uniform, expected to make it to an airplane in 15 minutes or less, although the contract doesn't specify this and if you take a little longer 'cause you're grabbing a bite to eat when they call, there's absolutely NOTHING they can do to you.

5 days on 3 days off, then 5 days on, 2 days off, in perpetuity, ad nauseum, amen.

They change the mix of reserve based on who is running the scheduling department, how lately they've gotten burned from not having an airport reserve or how lately they've gotten burned having too many airport reserves and not enough home reserves and no one was duty legal for a trip, etc.

If you are assigned more than one day of ready reserve, the first must start with a PM or Late RR, and the last day must be AM (for commutability).

The best mix was day 1 RRL, day 2-4 HR (home reserve), day 5 RRA. That's not so bad, especially if you're not flying, you can actually go catch a movie, work out, have dinner with friends, etc, ALMOST like a day off.

The worst mix was all 5 days Ready Reserve - they did this for about 6 months back in mid- 2003. I almost quit without having any backup job plans, it was brutal.

Right now if you got hired you'd be flying your butt off, they're so short of crews. I regularly credited 90-95 hours of pay on reserve most months and in 2005 timed out for the year in late November and was removed, with pay, for almost the entire month of December, crediting about 1,200 hours for the year.

 

[Dharmesh1231]

Lear70....I am assuming the monthly guarntee at Pncl is 75hrs, so when you fly beyond that, how are you paid...is it time and a half or what's the procedure there....trying to find out if Pncl's a good place to apply right now and get max flying a month.

 

[WMUSIGPI]

Forgive my ignorance, Ive never flown 121, but how bad is reserve? Do you have any sort of schedule? Do you have any idea of when you are on call and when you aren't? Do you have any days off a month?

Sorry to ask, mamma says Im "ignant"...

Reserve was much nicer at Mesaba than at the 135 company I'm at. At Mesaba there was no airport ready reserve. And you are considered on duty when you go on call with a 90 minute callout time. At the 135 I'm at you aren't on duty while on call so you can be on call for days at a time and unless they call you in you have no time off. Plus it's a 30 minute report time. Not to mention you didn't need to do the flight planning and stop for catering on the way at the airlines. If the phone rang you could finish dinner, shower, pack and still get there on time. At the 135.... drop the fork, maybe have time for an "Irish Shower" and hope traffic isn't too bad.

 

[Lazy8]

Have you folks listened to the PNCL 2006 Q4 conference call? Trenary makes a point to say that they're looking for contracts with other airlines that would expand the RJ fleet (with larger RJ aircraft). Some other good-to-know company planning/goals talked about on this call as well.

http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=131072&p=irol-IRHome

g

 

[CherryBomb]

Oh man I feel your pain, Part 135 is really the only type of work Ive done. I allways got the call to go to work at 11pm after a full day of washing the car, mowing the lawn etc. Yay! now I get to sit in a efen Lear for 14 hours!!!!

121 seems nice...
Pay seems like a kick in the family maker...

Reserve was much nicer at Mesaba than at the 135 company I'm at. At Mesaba there was no airport ready reserve. And you are considered on duty when you go on call with a 90 minute callout time. At the 135 I'm at you aren't on duty while on call so you can be on call for days at a time and unless they call you in you have no time off. Plus it's a 30 minute report time. Not to mention you didn't need to do the flight planning and stop for catering on the way at the airlines. If the phone rang you could finish dinner, shower, pack and still get there on time. At the 135.... drop the fork, maybe have time for an "Irish Shower" and hope traffic isn't too bad.

 

[Lear70]

Lear70....I am assuming the monthly guarntee at Pncl is 75hrs, so when you fly beyond that, how are you paid...is it time and a half or what's the procedure there....trying to find out if Pncl's a good place to apply right now and get max flying a month.

The short answer? You only get paid more if you actually fly more. Didn't used to be that way, but the Association backed down from a grievance I filed a long time ago about that where they USED to credit daily and if you flew over on any one day, you immediately got paid more than guarantee. They stopped doing that about 2 years ago.

For instance, if you fly 50 hours, you get paid 75. If you fly 80 hours, you get paid 80 hours.

In these two examples, I'm using fly and "credit" interchangeably, just for simplicity and because credit rarely exceeds block by more than an hour a month at PCL (except for CDO's).

Extension pay and Junior Assignment pay will pay over guarantee by 1.25 and 1.5 respectively, and you're SUPPOSED to be given a compensatory day off for those, but that's kind of a longer story as well (hard to get comp days when they're so short-staffed they have to JA and EXT people anyway).

Have you folks listened to the PNCL 2006 Q4 conference call? Trenary makes a point to say that they're looking for contracts with other airlines that would expand the RJ fleet (with larger RJ aircraft). Some other good-to-know company planning/goals talked about on this call as well.

He's been saying that for 3 years now.

 

[Lazy8]

He's been saying that for 3 years now.

PNCL hasn't had the opportunity to obtain flying outside of the NWA family until just recently though, correct? I imagine that was quite a limiting factor over the past few years.

g

 

[undpilot]

Airport reserve at Pinnacle is now only from 7pm to 11pm at night. No more sitting at the airport all day. All of the lines with airport reserve have it on the first 2-3 days, PM reserve in the middle, and AM reserve on the last day (5:30pm release).