Word. I was one of those smarta**es from an aviation school with lowered mins, and I still remember what one of my instructors told me: "This [the Dash] is a lot of airplane to handle at 1000 hours...a lot of airplane."
True dat. Comming from the 1900, the Ocho took a lot of studying to get down pat. DC gens, AC gens, TRUs, solid state inverters, AHRS, SAHS...not to mention keeping 180 till the marker and trying to slow down without pushing the props up.
Fun times. It was a good company with a lot of history and the best contract in the industry when I got hired. I remember getting my uniform fitted (!) in the trailer in the hangar (picture that).
There was funky 60's style decor in the hangar offices, really cheesy wood panneling upstairs in the classrooms, and there was actually a bunk room down the hall from the old 99 days. Old Rei Torres would go "hellloooo?"
Lunch in the terminal was most amusing. If you ordered fries with your 0.0003 lb burger, you got like 3 fries total.
I still remember sitting with 2 of my buds at a joint behind the Hilton they put us up at (at company expense, making full pay/per diem from the first day). We were 24-25, drinking and eating crab cakes, us going to LYH, ORF and EWN the next day. You'd have though we'd just sh!t golden eggs.
But it couldn't last.
The Mesa deal in 93 really was only the first blow.
When Mesa got the first USAir RJs in 96, that really drove the stake in.
It's a place lost in time. One day, some manager at USAir is going wake up and go "WTF?" and sell the place off or break it up. Too bad, really...it's the last of the breed (Britt, Ransome, Rocky Mountan, PBA, etc...)
Good luck fellas...I laugh when they say that "flow through/jets are right around the corner!". They told us that back in 93.
Nu
