Pinnacle Airlines

[Long-Gonner]

Questions for Pinnacle pilots.

1. Which bases are the most jr, or easiest to hold a line at?

2. How do your travel benefits work on NW and on your own aircraft?

3. How many aircraft do you currently have? How many are expected over the next few years.

Thanks for the info.

 

[dondk]

DTW is junior for both seats. Holding a line in DTW will take about 6 months for an FO.

Travel Bennies... Our own and Mesaba are free, Mainline is $25 r/t on the mainland, it increases to the south, Asia, and Europe. We get Continental and KLM bennies too. KLM is $60, and CAL is about $10 more than ours for mainline and increase greatly to other destinations other than continental US.

The best way to travel is JS on NWA... JS plus 2 is the rule.


We have about 49 or so... will go to 95 by this time in 2004. Last Saab flight is in 2 weeks.

 

[DoinTime]

MEM has actualy become the most junior FO base for becoming a line holder. For December this is how it panned out for line holders.

MEM FO: 3 months
DTW FO: 4 months
MSP FO: 18 months

MEM CA: 47 months
DTW CA: 20 months
MSP CA: 29 months

 

[Long-Gonner]

Thanks for the info. I have some more Q's if you have a minute.

Where do you do your ground training for the CRJ?

Do you have sims in MEM?

Is it true that the company doesn't pay for housing during training? If so, what do new hires usually do for shelter?

Thanks again for your time.

 

[dondk]

All training is now done in MEM, the days of ATL and ILG and anywhere else is long gone.

No pay, no per diem, no travel pass, no ID while in training until completion of checkride (about 6-8 weeks). Most N/H either find or form a crash pad, hotels (some are cheap), rent apartments or stay with friends or family.

With the displacements (mostly senior) and more than enough junior FO's bailing north in January I would expect to see some availability in MEM for a cheap place to stay.

Training has improved in the 18 months I have been around and they are getting more streamlined with each class.

To respond to doinTime... about time someone with less than 8 years can hold a line in MEM!!! Now only if they could get a FO under 6 months in MSP!!!

 

[othello]

WOW!

"No pay, no per diem, no travel pass, no ID while in training until completion of checkride (about 6-8 weeks)"

That is ridiculous! You folks are getting bent over.

When is your next contract due? soon I hope.
I allways thought Great Lakes had the worst contract.

I don't know too many people that can go 2 month with out pay. talk about selling your soul for a job. Sounds like a second rate operation.

 

[dondk]

Our next contract is due in May 05, but I would not count on that... Maybe within a year or two later (if we are lucky).

Second rate operation... I would not say that. Those hired right now will hold a seniority number in the low 600's. We are expected to go over 1300 pilot's in the next 18-24 months. So, for two months w/o pay you will hold seniority in the upper 50% in a all jet fleet. As seniority is everything, it is not a bad place to be.

I feel for the people who will get class dates next spring or summer. The bang for the buck will not be there.

As for the "worst" contract... We are a regional, with a regional contract. Signed well before many of the other contracts were signed. At the time of the signing it was not bad.

Maybe one day we will have a contract similar to Air Whiskey or Comair. Comair raised the bar for all of us, and for one, I am thankful. I support Mesaba in raising the bar a little further. Instead of commenting about OUR contract, you should be supporting our brothers and sisters to get better contract so all of us can enjoy our lives at the regional. A place many of will stay for our careers.

Othello... I thought you were Mesaba, you know our contract.

 

[othello]

Yes I do work for Mesaba, But I have no idea what your contract say's, other than what I hear second or third hand in the crew room exc. And you never know what is being exaggerated. I said "Sounds like a second rate operation." being the way your company treat's the new hire's. I know you folks have top of the line equipment and are good people.

I am still amazed at your lack of a trainning contract.
No pay, no per diem, no travel pass, no ID while in training until completion of checkride (about 6-8 weeks).

 

[acaTerry]

Is it true that th upgrades are still 8 or so months? What do you think for folks getting on board in Jan-Feb?
If it's true that's darn fast. Right now 18-20 mos just for J41, which will be gone in not too long, so who knows what for the jets.

 

[PCL_128]

Is it true that th upgrades are still 8 or so months? What do you think for folks getting on board in Jan-Feb?
If it's true that's darn fast. Right now 18-20 mos just for J41, which will be gone in not too long, so who knows what for the jets.

No, that's just the company's propaganda. Upgrade for a new hire is looking at around 1 1/2 years now. The guys already on the seniority list with the 3000 hour min for upgrade are looking at the end of next year for upgrade.

 

[dondk]

Othello....

The way we treat new hires is immoral personally. It can be much worse than the no ID, no pay, no travel pass, no per diem and they were giving guys moving days while still in training and BEFORE they actually got to thier bases. Not withstanding some scheduling issues as well in the sim. It also at some point last year was 10-16 weeks to get through. Now our mechanics get hotel, rental car, and I do believe they get paid, the FA's get hotel but no pay, the pilots get nothing!

Upgrade times have ALWAYS been exagerated by the company and some people as well. Why our own people do it is beyond me, we have had some "lucky" people who got in at the right time and upgraded at the right time and they were here about 6 months. The 18 months is fairly accurate and I would expect it to climb slowly towards the end of the year. The problem is the most junior Captain currently is around 450 in senority. We should have about 150 or so FO's closing in on the 3000TT some time next year. I guess that is why we are taking on many GIA dudes to keep the FO ranks full. Who knows? surely not the pilot group!!!!

 

[DoinTime]

the FA's get hotel but no pay

I was told by one of our FA's that they received an 'allowance' while they were in training. Something like $200 for the two weeks. Not much but at least enough to cover most of your food needs.

Unfortunately we had very little bargaining power on our last contract. Our entire operation could have been absorbed by Mesaba in a manner or months (and it was well on its way to becoming reality with the closing of MSP and Avros moving into MEM, taking our best routes). Our decision makers decided that none of the bargaining power that we did have should be used on people that didn't even work here yet. Hence we have PFT and no compensation of any kind provided for pilots during training.

The 18 months is fairly accurate and I would expect it to climb slowly towards the end of the year.

Its always tricky when it comes to upgrades around here. The last, most junior, captain vacancy offered (about 2 months ago) went to a guy with about 26 months in. There are still about 40 FO's senior to that guy that are currently pushing 2.5-3.5 years with the company. All of the displaced captains are due to be back in their seats by March and with the info that DO let out last week it looks like they are only going to need around 75-85 additional upgrades for next year (pretty much 10/month from April onward). When they start offering upgrades again I would expect around 32-33 months is what its going to take to hold the captain seat but by the end of next year I bet it will be down to around 24-25 months. I think the days of the quick upgrade are long, long gone and the ones fortunate enough to get the quick upgrade are doomed to serve a lifetime of reserve duty.

My opinion anyway.

 

[cl-65link]

Memphis is like Detroit, without the snow. If you are thinking of moving there permanently, the further you live from the airport, the better off you'll be, especially since the city keeps annexing "surburbs" like Cordova and Bartlett. It's no wonder, over 60% of the Fedex pilots that are based there commute.

 

[NDPILOT]

I feel for the people who will get class dates next spring or summer. The bang for the buck will not be there.

Dondk -

What did you mean by that?

thanks

nd

 

[KingAirer]

THe best thing about Memphis is... I-40 Eastbound...Its a dump.

 

[cornbread]

Now our mechanics get hotel, rental car, and I do believe they get paid, the FA's get hotel but no pay, the pilots get nothing!

I know I am probably preaching to the chior, but they show no respect to your new-hires. The kicker is the ID. "You're good enough to be an employee here but we just can't justify the high cost of an ID at this point." OUCH. That is no team I would want to be on for ANY length of time. Again, this is towards your company, not the pilots that make it possible.

The salt to the wound (that I was unaware of) is the above quote. That really hurts.

Oh, and yes, Memphis only has two things Beale Street and a guy named Elvis.

I feel for the people who will get class dates next spring or summer. The bang for the buck will not be there.

NDPilot,
I think he is referring to the amount of seniority that will surge under you if you are on now (or soon). Which would ease the pain of two months of indentured servitude. As for those getting on the list later, the blow is not softened much if your low on the seniority list. I may be wrong in my interpretation.

 

[dondk]

NDpilot...

Cornbread hit it on the head!! Right now a guy or gal in training or near to class will still be in the 50-60% of the pilot group, after that your are in the higher 40% of seniority and looking at reserve for a long time until the jets catch up with the hiring. At some point we wil be hiring for reserves as there will not be enough jets to accomodate all of the pilots.

Cornbread...

yes it does suck that we are treated as third class employee's while in training. I have never been thrilled finding out other classes of employee's get different treatments. As it was put to me though... certain employee's are in demand and as such there will be "incentives" to obtain and retain those employee's. As for pilots, there are more than enough that they do not need an incentive. This came straight fro H.R. when I questioned the disparity and "discrimination" amongst employee's.

 

[DoinTime]

The HR department has been advertising a 1300 member strong pilot workforce for some time now. Even our own Union has stood behind this advertising. With the newest version of the IPO we are guaranteed a fleet of 95 (46 more than we have now) CRJ's to be delivered by the end of 2004. With Northwest's track record of whipsawing pilot groups I don't think we will be receiving more than the minimum until a new contract is signed (probably in late 2006). Under their current staffing guidelines these 95 aircraft would require 950 crew members. They have expressed interest (and already taken measures with the captains) in getting those guidelines down to 8.6 crew members per airplane or 817 for 95 aircraft.

With our seniority list already overstaffed to over 600 pilots the people getting on now, or in the near future will not enjoy the rapid advancement that people that got on over the past couple years because the deliveries will most likely stop before they get a chance to upgrade. We are going to have a considerable number of 3-4 year FO's before this is all behind us.