The 10k up front has turned into a 10k bond. First year FO is about 52k on the Q300 a bit more for the Q400.
Crew moral is down (actually that is quite an understatement) in both Eastern and Sunstate. Our #1 you beaut manager is a complete turd, who would be hard pressed being honest with his mother on her death bed.
Upper level management (those above the turd) treat us with utter contempt and distaste.
Then of course there is the issue of a whole crap load of FO's joining that have almost no aviation experience, meaning the Captain has low powered backup, whilst doing non precision approaches into non radar aerodromes in appalling weather. Extremely bad landings, and atrocious circling approach techniques are the order of the day.
Now I am not try to belittle the new QL recruites that exhibite the above characeristics, because they wouldn't know who they were anyway, **** if I was able to get a Dash job with sweet FA hours I would have jumped at it.
The sad part about it is when the management (read "Turd" or "Cockroach") tell us that these guys are "meeting the standard", and somehow think that we are so stupid as to believe them.
We are bleeding FO's and Captains and at the same time getting told a bunch of lies from management. FO's who have enough experience to upgrade to Captains WILL run out this year. The capacity to train FO's is diminishing as Training Capt's become Q400 Capt's or Virgin Crew, and yet the need to train new recruitd has NEVER been higher.
What the hell is going on?
Sorry it is getting late and I have to go to bed.