Thread interruption
Back to the original point of the thread and a little bit of history. Once upon a time there was a good little commuter airline in California called WestAir. They flew as a United Express with a mix of EMB-110, EMB-120, Shorts 360, and even 6 Bae-146s. Later the Bandits were replaced with Jetstreams. A great airline to work for and a great part of the country to be in. This airline's pilot group voted in ALPA in 1989. Can't remember the exact date, but lets call it a couple of years later, Mesa Air buys WestAir. WestAir is a unionized carrier with decent wages for a regional. Mesa, at that time, is a non-unionized carrier whose new hire pilots must pay $10,000 or so to be a first officer on a Beech 1900 at crappy wages. Slowly observers see Mesa Beech 1900s flying WestAir routes in Southern California. To make a long story short this cancer spreads until WestAir folds in the late 1990s, a shell of it's former self. All because of Mesa.
I used to hate Mesa pilots for this but then I realized that most of the scumbags that paid $10,000 to fly a Beech 1900 for low pay and were knowingly used to takeover WestAir flying were no longer working at Mesa, so my views softened. Still the corporate culture remains and they keep following the same pattern. They did almost the exact same thing to CCAir and given a chance they will do it to somebody else. That is why I hate Mesa, not necessarily the pilots, but definitely the company.
As an interesting side note, WestAir Airlines started Atlantic Coast Airlines. The pilots who saw the handwriting on the wall left in 1989 and went out there, others followed later. So you won't find a lot of compassion for Mesa from senior ACA pilots either.
Typhoonpilot