Testimonials

Linda Berlin , Dash 8 First Officer

“Do you realize how lucky you are to have a regional airline job with only 500 hours?” lectured a friend on the phone the other day. “I had 4,500 hours when I got hired at SkyWest. I had to fly dead bodies around to build time.” I’d heard this from him on several occasions, but listened to the lecture again. I was telling him about my initial operating experience (IOE) and how much fun I was having flying the Dash-8 in the Rockies.

Looking back, I can’t believe how much I hesitated to spend $10,000 for training in Mesa's PACE program at San Juan College in Farmington, New Mexico. It’s only been four months since I finished the CRJ jet flight training device (FTD) at the school. I’ve just completed IOE, I’m settled in a beautiful place – Grand Junction, Colorado - and I feel like the luckiest person in the world. Thank goodness I took a chance and stuck it out. It was one of the hardest career decisions I’ve made to date and this is a second career change for me. I worked as a professional writer for various newspapers and magazines. Three years ago, I took a job as a flight attendant for Southwest Airlines to help decide if I did want to become an airline pilot. I had my instrument rating when I was hired at Southwest and while working there full-time, I achieved my commercial and multi ratings. I decided I could handle the lifestyle and that Southwest was the company I wanted to end up at, but I needed regional airline experience first, which led me to the PACE program.

With only four hundred hours, I contemplated getting my CFI and CFII ratings and knew I wanted to teach in the San Francisco Bay area to build time. My original plan was to apply at SkyWest when I met their minimums. I knew it would take several years and I’d keep my flight attendant job for stability.

In the fall of 2003, a Southwest captain told me about the PACE program. I researched it and vacillated on whether or not to even apply. It seemed like a small fortune to not get a rating and only the promise of an airline interview. The economy was terrible and the airline industry seemed doomed. Whenever I’m in doubt about what to do, I tend to revert back to my hardcore journalism days. I talked to lots of different pilots about it. A pilot friend said I’d be so behind the CRJ-200 that it would take at least six months to catch up. She advised me to become a CFI for a few years to really learn the ropes. Others agreed. It made sense. They had built their hours as CFIs and they wanted me to do the same. So I gave up on the idea of attending San Juan until I met a Southwest pilot who knew a good deal about the Mesa program. He told me I would be crazy not to apply. I wondered if I would regret not pursuing it.

In March 2004, I met Rich Castle, Chief Flight Instructor at Mesa Pilot Development, at the Women in Aviation International Conference in Reno. He asked how much money I made as a flight attendant and encouraged me to come to San Juan. “You’ll make the same amount of money as a new hire pilot, but you’ll be flying the planes instead of serving peanuts in the back,” he said grinning. “You’ll get hired. He said it so confidently that I believed him.

On a plane back from the conference, I sat next to a woman who was a CFI with about 1700 hours. I told her about the PACE program, about how I was having such a hard time deciding what to do. She listened patiently, then leaned back in her seat, sighed heavily and told me how it had taken her more than two years to get her hours and she still didn’t have a job at a regional. “If I’d known about the PACE program back then, I would have done it,” she said.

That was it. I applied. When I got accepted, I thought about asking Southwest for a leave of absence, but a mentor told me to quit, to make the leap, to take the chance, to go for it. I quit Southwest on December 27, 2004 and moved to Farmington five days later.

I put my life on a shelf for several months; my boyfriend broke up with me (he didn’t want a long-distance relationship); I studied constantly and I made friends that I’ll have for life. I completed the CRJ FTD training in mid May, then interviewed with Mesa Air Group on June 22. The next morning I got a call. It was Chris Bender from Mesa inviting me to ground school on July 6. I broke down crying. I couldn’t believe I was hearing from her already, I couldn’t believe that it was all working out. I’d put all my eggs in one basket. I apologized for being such a girl. “It’s nice to hear some emotion,” she said.

About a week into ground school, I found out I got assigned the Dash-8 -- the plane with the highest washout rate. I immediately feared the worst – I was unlucky and would have to go back to flying small planes over the Pacific. (After San Juan, I worked for a month delivering aircraft to Guam and Brisbane, Australia.) The entire time I went through Dash training, I thought about small planes waiting for delivery and how my body would never be found if the engine failed over the Pacific. It was a good incentive to study hard. I told my sim instructor at Mesa – who also went through the San Juan program what I would have to do if I didn’t pass training. “You’ll pass,” he said reassuringly.

It was a good thing I trained at San Juan College. Aside from the written exam for the Dash, which was frightful, I knew how to prepare for the oral exam and the sim training. I had my callouts, flows and emergency checklists memorized. My sim partner rocked. We both passed. In fact, all of us from San Juan passed Dash training. I felt well prepared for the challenges of a turboprop; I’d invested well and was reaping the rewards.

I recently shot an approach into Denver down to minimums – two hundred feet overcast. It wasn’t a perfect landing – I landed a little left of centerline – but it felt great, the way it’s supposed to. It was my first time for an approach down to minimums and I did it in a Dash!

For pilots who ask me what they should do to get hired at a regional airline, I can only recommend San Juan College. It helped me realize my dreams as a low-time pilot. If you want to change your career, it’s a good move because you will get to a major airline much faster. Tomorrow I fly to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. It will be my first time seeing the Grand Tetons. I can’t wait.

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Andrew Stevens, CRJ First Officer

I interviewed for the program last October and I had a cast from a broken hand. I was so worried it would affect my performance in the sim, but in the long run, it just ended up being a good ice-breaker. I remember being very impressed with the facilities, and after the experience, I can say I still am. The staff was excellent, and I think they prepared us great for where many of us ended up. One Instructor especially was excellent, with his actual experiences within Mesa and United to teach us the CRJ from the inside and out. His patience with our class was very well appreciated, given the jokers, and the hundreds of questions people asked.

I can say now that after ground school in Phoenix, many of us “San Juaners” were very over-prepared with the systems of the CL-65 Regional Jet. Those CFM’s we all were responsible for were an excellent resource. It was nice to feel like I already knew the airplane, given my luck of actually getting assigned to the CRJ after being hired last June.

I have always had a tough time with school, and having lifelong dreams of becoming a pilot, the regimented system in Farmington proved to finally be the perfect mix of responsibility, and professional preparation for a career in aviation. It forced me to achieve, and didn’t allow me to be “on my own schedule.” This is how ground school and the simulator training really were once we were getting paid for it. There was no relaxing, or taking time off for personal reasons.

I have to admit, I really had my doubts. When the teachers kept quoting “When you’re online, you will be responsible for….” I kept thinking in my head, “There’s no way a guy like me really holds a torch to an opportunity like that.” Being such a terror when I was younger and barely pulling off a C average through high school and college made this actual opportunity seem far off.

Yet somehow, I don’t know if it was my drive, or just having picked the right school, but I was hired as a First Officer with Mesa Air Group. Since having been hired, things were not easy. The ground school was hard. And I can imagine possibly harder for friends who were awarded the Beech 1900, and Dash 8. Then, when the simulator training came around, after barely having a chance to breathe, we were back in the game again, struggling to keep up with it, and not “wash out.” The last thing you wanted to do after all of the work you’ve accomplished, would be to have to hang it up, because you couldn’t pass a couple lessons.

Here now in Chicago, at a new base, one of the busiest airports in the country, it is a little intimidating for those of us with fewer than 400, or even 300 hours. Just off of I.O.E., the captains are still holding most of our hands, but little by little, we are really getting the big picture. The jet is a large machine! It moves very fast, and allows for nearly zero room for error. Add in the radios, congestion, and it really keeps you on your toes!

It kind of hit me during a departure from O’Hare to Portland, Maine in the CRJ 700. It was my leg, and I remember looking away from the screens before turning the autopilot on, noticing the Chicago Skyline that I was hand-flying a regional jet over! This might wear off a little over time, but to me it is still a very exciting, and privileged opportunity. There is however, no doubt in my mind, that if I could go back, I wouldn’t change a thing as far as coming to Farmington.

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