Are the Bean Counters (where cost accounting is "the church altar") a major problem regarding training costs and training " footprints (length)" at Pinnacle and many other companies?
Until less than nine years ago or so, at least one US major airline had no desk top computer training aids to allow a pilot to prepare in advance for an 0500 brief with a very rushed 0600-1000 fixed based training on the B-757. Its 'training cost managers' finally justified the expense to develop computer-based training aids which allowed pilots to better understand and prepare for training on their very first FMC aircraft, and allow that fleet's training equipment to finally catch up with that of some other US airlines. And the company's First Officers each had about 7,000 hours flying or more (CV-580, 727..), never mind the even more experienced captains. But these hours do you no good when you struggle to keep your head above water in an over-compressed, very rushed training syllabus learning an entirely new concept of c0ckp1t management. A different fleet has probably the very best training program, even several years ago.
If bean counters can create such handicaps with one US major airline (some FOs had previously spent their own money on an FMC course at Boeing, reportedly about $5,000 each, being well aware of how inadequate their airline's syllabus was; their classmates were baffled that a few guys could grasp the concepts and relax a bit each day after class, without day after day of confusion and humiliation), then what about an operation where new-hire FOs sometimes have very little experience (partly because there is no per diem nor pitiful paycheck for about five weeks)? Some apparently have very little instrument and no swept-wing backgrounds, based upon what two CRJ Check Airmen told me (at DTW and DFW). One had reportedly finished the famous (or infamous?) Gulfstream program in Florida but still had an inadequate instrument flying background, from what I was told, after paying so many thousands of hard-earned dollars and flying as FO on a B-1900 turboprop, mostly in VMC
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