rbedgood

Its not Mesa I hate, I usually have ear plugs in so I don't hear the drone of the pre-flight announcements. However my shoulders and neck are aching just thinking about an RJ. My issue is the dang planes. The carryon restrictions are ridiculous, okay so I'm an airbus fan.

I agree the WN imitations would be annoying, but I have to agree with "mallthus" that the more pressing concern is the communication skills of the FA. If the passengers in exit rows need to be able to speak and understand english shouldn't the FA be held to at least as high of a standard. And by speak I mean a comprehendible (sp?) version of the language.

FCYTravis

Thankfully, I guess, I haven't had the "pleasure" of flying YV yet... in fact I've only ever flown QX regional metal. Next week I've got legs on UAX-OO and USX-YV/Piedmont, so I guess I'll find out how well YV handles their "new US" RJ ops...

Joeypete

Exactly! The gate agents used to do that too. They actually had the nerve to tell people the delay was HP's fault....that sucks. Lately I have been hearing more and more people asking for Mesa Airlines when they check in at the ticket counter. Travel agents and res agents must be doing a better job of telling people the flights are operated by Mesa. When I make boarding announcements I always say "Thank you for choosing America West...in just a few moments we will begin boarding Mesa Airlines flight...." Technically we are not supposed to but I hear United and Delta doing the same thing with their regional carriers.

I agree the dorky announcements on board are just that...dorky. Its nice they want to try to make people laugh but sometimes they sound like idiots..lol.

KevAZ

Mesa stinks to high heaven and I refuse to fly them. More and more people I work with have the same opinion and HP is losing face with those hicks.

Joeypete

Yes it's sad....I don't know what's going on anymore but it seems like our management has been more worried about the merger lately than getting on Mesa's butt about their performance. Hopefully things will change after the merger. Then we will have more regional carriers to work with...might get Mesa alittle more concious about their performance, knowing they will have competition.

formeraa

As usual, Mesa was 45 minutes late leaving PHX. They couldn't find a 2nd FA for our flight. Actually, the flight was showing on-time at 8:10am, but no gate agent bothered to show up until 8:00am (and didn't make an announcement until 8:10am -- seemed annoyed the pax were asking her when the flight was going to leave -- DUHHHHHH!).

When we got to OAK, the pilot said that both gates were occupied. Apparently, there was an HP jet with a mechanical on one of the gates. After 45 minutes, the ground crew finally decided to move the plane. No sh**, Sherlock! Who runs the OAK station anyway? I assume that these decisions were made by HP, not Mesa. They KNEW the plane was coming eventually!

I wrote CS a letter on this one. They sent me one of those tiered discount coupons and my Mother saved $100 on a Mexico trip! Not a bad ending.

FormerAA_DFW

Mesa certainly at least has its share of problems. For instance, not being able to find a replacement F/A in your hub is inexcusable.

However, one of the problems with complaining about any regional airlines' performance is that the mainline carrier often dictates many of the things that cause problems to passengers.

The mainline carrier usually sets the schedule, including determining the amount of turn time between flights. Tight turn times for any airline increase utilization, but they also mean that a single delay for any reason is likely to cascade throughout the day.

For any airline, there is also a trade-off between maximizing the number of flights and emphasizing operational performance. Most mainline carriers require their commuter airlines to operate with a much lower ratio of spare aircraft than they maintain. Generally, this would maximize their financial return from their Express operation since they aren't paying their partner for "unproductive" aircraft that are just sitting around. The downside is that the commuter's operational performance may suffer because there just aren't as many aircraft to plug into the schedule when something breaks or gets out of position.

The proverbial friend of a friend once told me Mesa wasn't entitled to any spare aircraft under their contract until they had a substantial number of jets. According to her, even now they only allowed to have a couple spares out of the 60-odd aircraft that they fly for HP. She also told me that UA once scheduled a single Mesa CRJ-700 to fly from SFO to AUS to IAD to PHL. None of these stations were within 750 miles of Mesa's maintenance bases or their spare aircraft, which was based in DEN. THAT is a recipe for operational disaster.

There are clearly regional airlines out there that have overcome these challenges. Skywest certainly pops to mind. I would love to know if they are simply better operationally, or if they do not have as many restrictions placed on them as some of the other regionals.