Building Time the Smart Way

Mesa Air Group has announced that Mesa Airlines pilots participating in United’s Aviate program shall henceforth earn service credit towards their United transition for flying across all of Mesa’s operations—including American Eagle. 

The Aviate program is a career-development initiative that provides pilots building flight hours with Mesa a path to aircrew positions with United Airlines. Previously, pilots participating in the program earned service credit hours only while flying aircraft operating as United Express. 

Chris Gill, Mesa Air Group MEC Chairman representing the Air Line Pilots Association, states, "We're glad Aviate has chosen to extend mainline advancement opportunities to all Mesa pilots. This represents a tremendous opportunity for our pilots, and I am confident it will also help Mesa retain and attract qualified pilots. It is our goal to help make Mesa the most attractive option for regional pilots.”

Only twenty-years ago, the aviation job marketplace was wholly without organized conduits like United’s Aviate program.

Young pilots languished in low-paying, low-prestige, flight instruction gigs, hoping to survive starvation and inept students long enough to build the hours necessary to move-on to genuinely dangerous flying jobs—such as humping cancelled bank-checks over the Cascade Mountains in Senecas, Chieftains, and 300\400 series Cessna piston-twins. 

For hundreds, oftentimes thousands, of hours, journeymen pilots endured brutal schedules, shoddy avionics, murderous ice, and continuing poor pay, all in the dim hope of securing an interview with a commuter airline—to say nothing of the majors.  

Today, such terrors exist primarily in the memories of old pilots (like me) who live in awe of the opportunities of which today’s young aviators may avail themselves—opportunities like United’s Aviate Program.

FMI: https://unitedaviate.com