Pinnacle Attrition and Lower Minimums

[liv'n_on_credit]

I'm pretty sure Pinnacle has dropped their upgrade mins to 1800, ATP, and a couple of hundred in the CRJ.

Not yet we haven't...I just finished upgrade a few days ago, and as of last week when I took my type ride, they were still 3500 TT, reducable to 3000 with 500 at Pinnacle.

Talking with some APD's there, it sounds like it's definitely NOT going to 1800 TT anytime soon.

By the way...the bust rate in upgrade has been pretty low lately...looking at my class, and a couple classes before mine, it's about 80% folks passing the ride on the first attempt, and only a couple people in the last several classes didn't make it through at all, after their second attempt at the ride.

 

[Lear70]

So don't get riled up about low time FO, they're everywhere. Pinnacle is not the only place that hire'em. Nowadays you don't build ME in a light twin, you build it in a CRJ.

Yes, that's very true.

Not that it's a GOOD thing for safety, but that's just the way it is.

Just wondering if you could get displaced as a CA as wunderkinds come up from underneath. You could be on reserve for a while.

I was on reserve for 3 years, 1 month because of this.

I was a street CA hired just prior to 9/11. After that, hiring stopped for 6 months. It was enough for the senior F/O's to get their time, the company to fix the training department, and the pass rate on the upgrade got back above 80%.

So every senior F/O who upgraded was still senior to me, and I stayed on the same place on the reserve CA list for YEARS.

The price you pay for jumping ahead of everyone in line, so to speak. In retrospect, I was an idiot to go to PCL and turn down Netjets in early 2001 before 9/11, but that's the way life goes.

 

[SEVEN]

It's called "self-insured" and "risk-management" and a lot of luck so far.

Pinnacle is self-insured up to (I believe) $1 Million, meaning that if they bend an airplane up to that amount, insurance doesn't pay a thing, comes directly out of the pockets on Noncaring.

Second, Risk Management. Senior management discussed this once in a pilot meeting when Pinnacle first started getting the 400 hour wunderkids and the Captains were p*ssed about having to take up the slack with what these guys didn't know.

Indeed, my thought (which I voiced to management) was: if I have to do O.E., I want to get paid Check Airman override.

Management said that it's all about the numbers and how much risk you're willing to take on. The odds of anything going wrong are fairly low. The odds that it will be something the Captain can't handle as long as you can stabilize the airplane and let the low-time guy fly the automation while you, the Captain, handle the emergency then you, the Captain, perform the landing, are very low as well.

They're willing to accept that risk, and with the only 2 major accidents in the jet being guys that had high total time (even though they had relatively low jet experience), there isn't enough data to pin it on (even though the 3701 accident F/O was low time as well. Don't remember the MKE crew times).

They've used that data to talk the insurance into accepting those mins, although I'm sure they pay a higher premium for it.

That's one of the main reasons Terry Mefford was so inflexible about Captain upgrade minimums. Low time in one seat is a recipe for disaster. Low time in both seats is like baking the cake and icing it yourself.

Don't forget about the time they almost ran into a mountain.:bomb:

 

[CX880]

Sorry I guess I'm thinking of another airline.

 

[Lear70]

"Almost" is the key word.

Pinnacle has had so many "almosts" and "near-____" incidents that it's scary.

More than I've ever heard of at any other airline. FOQA and ASAP have helped a LOT of this, as has the company policy of downloading the FDR after EVERY ferry flight because of a rash of exceedances in FOQA data after ferry flights.

Pinnacle has a LOT of very good pilots.

They have a small group of screwups, just like every other airline. Now that some watchdog programs and safety nets are in place, the number of "bonehead near-accidents" has drastically decreased (or at least it had started down that path nicely when I left).

 

[Enterprise]

I flew and did training with the MKE FO. He is a very good pilot and was just put in a bad situation with the CA flying. He got absolved of all wrong doing by the feds and company and is probably a good captain at PNCL by now.