All Mesaba aircraft have been placarded with "Operated By Pinnacle Airlines" but will carry the "XJ" placard as well until they are transferred out of the operational fence.

For the last 12 years, I have worked for Mesaba Aviation, Inc., also known as Mesaba Airlines. In July of 2010 , Mesaba was acquired by Pinnacle Airlines Corp. and during the months since, great preparations were made, and scrapped, and then made again and then acted upon to merge Mesaba’s jet operations with Pinnacle’s. As of January 4th, I officially became an employee of Pinnacle Airlines, Inc.

Though, by all generally observed evidence available to the general public’s eye, nobody is the wiser. I still fly “Delta” flights. (Well, “Delta Connection”, but only the side of the airplane seems to say that. Nobody else really does.) When you board a flight I operate, you are carrying a Delta boarding pass. Not a “Pinnacle” boarding pass. 99.9% of our passengers don’t have a clue that the airplane they are riding on is being operated by crewmembers that work for Pinnacle, but utilize Mesaba procedures, under what the FAA calls a “fenced environment.” Close to the same number have never heard the names “Mesaba” and “Pinnacle.” And even if you told them all about the truth of the matter, they wouldn’t care. “When will we arrive?” is really about  the only thing they care about.

For the crews, however, it is pretty blatant that things have changed and that they will continue to. We all have been re-badged. The airplanes have new logos indicating that we are being operated by Pinnacle (such as in the photo above). There have been small tweaks here and there to procedures, but a trip to the schoolhouse will be required to fully transition ex-Mesaba crew to work with native Pinnacle crew. The Mesaba general offices, or “GO” in Eagan has been vacated. All operations are now coordinated from Pinnacle HQ in Memphis. The callsign we use now is “Flagship.” And the list goes on and on.

For many non-crew employees, the merge with Pinnacle has meant either the loss of their jobs, or having to pick up and move to Memphis if they wanted to keep them. Former Mesaba co-worker Paulajean had this reaction in her own blog, and I think it sums it up nicely:

…it was announced that Mesaba had been sold to Pinnacle Airlines. This was an airline that was our competitor and whom we had often watched struggle to perform. With this purchase, all of us were told that within the next couple years, we would be expected to move to Memphis if we wanted to keep our jobs. Most of us were shocked and heartbroken. We had been through many ups and downs as a company, but this was far worse than anything thrown at us in the past. We were a Minnesota company, full of people that had grown up with this company and put so much of ourselves into it. To be told we all had to move and to look around the room that day and realize that so many of us would not, that it would never be the same again, was just too sad.

The whole “Mesaba-sold-to-Pinnacle” concept has been confusing to everyone. Like Paulajean said, Mesaba had the stronger performance history, and Pinnacle had struggled to perform. Mesaba had been made into the largest CRJ-900 operator in the industry, and was producing record revenue for Delta. Pinnacle was struggling with the acquisition of Colgan Air (who operates for United and US Airways) and the fallout from the Flight 3407 crash in 2009. Pinnacle had also been struggling with performance issues on the Delta Connection side. Both airlines shared a long history (and rivalry) as Northwest Airlines Airlink and now Delta Connection, but Mesaba always seemed to have the more secure and respected operation. So why didn’t we buy Pinnacle? Why was it the other way around?

First off, Mesaba was a wholly-owned subsidiary of Delta. Pinnacle was a publicly traded independent organization. It just wasn’t going to happen the “other way around” from a corporate-mechanics point of view. But it very well may be that Delta set up the transaction purposefully so Mesaba’s people, operating culture, and success would bolster Pinnacle. In actuality of the matter, even though Mesaba was purchased by Pinnacle, it is now long-time Mesaba people who have taken top leadership positions post-acquisition. The COO is none other than John Spanjers, who has led Mesaba since 1999, through growth, labor struggles, bankruptcy, and regrowth, divestiture, and now merger. John is a numbers guy – and he is good at pushing his team to get results in operational performance and safety. He has had a good, respectable relationship with Richard Anderson, former Northwest chief, now at the helm of Delta. Several of his time-trusted upper management partners have also migrated south (to Memphis) to help lead the “new” Pinnacle — people who are now either VPs or EVPs of Flight Ops (pilots), Tech Ops (aircraft maintenance), Inflight (flight attendants), and Safety.

It is clear to me that this is all by Delta’s hand. They financed the acquisition, and they clearly provide the revenue stream that makes Pinnacle tick. The departure of long-time CEO Phil Trenary and COO Doug Shockey was overdue. The choice of their replacements (former Frontier Airlines CEO and airline restructuring expert Sean Menke, and Spanjers, respectively) indicate that a big player needed the acquisition and merger to work a certain way, in a certain amount of time. I think former Mesaba employees can take solace in the knowledge that they will be working for the same people…by design.

Nonetheless, this year will be trying for many employees as they become “Pinnaclized.” It is somewhat like losing your identity when you have to learn all new procedures, new names, new phone numbers…and you were just happy the way things were. But the upside is a good one – now that we are part of a very large airline, we have good inertia for our career longevity. The long-term plan is to change Colgan Air’s name to “Mesaba,” so that our former company legacy can live on in name at the very least. There are a lot of Mesaba people already working in high places at the Colgan operation to ensure that the Mesaba operational culture is integrated there. The “new Mesaba” will run only turboprops (on the Q400 for United, and the Saab SF340 for United and US Airways). The ability for pilots to bid system-wide between the Mesaba-Colgan and Pinnacle operations for positions under a unified, single seniority list and single contract has already provided job security for many legacy Mesaba pilots.

All of the upside considered, there will be some rough patches to navigate through. The company desperately needs to restructure and complete the transition of the legacy-Mesaba jet operation over to Pinnacle. The Colgan operation needs to become more reliable and lean – if only to prepare for future opportunities. If everything is successful in these regards, the company will be very well positioned for growth as their primary partners – Delta and United – continue in their epic battle to dominate domestic flying in a quest to feed their international hubs. We already are a big player in NYC and Delta has big plans to expand LaGuardia this year. Meanwhile, as the Continental-United merger continues to roll through its challenges, there has been indications that more Q400 flying may be at hand soon as the new United network takes shape. With American Airlines in restructuring mode, and US Airways, United, and Delta all looking to capitalize on opportunities, Pinnacle can really have a bright future.

In the end, the culture needs to reinvent itself across all company lines, and it will. I am confident that, over time, as we blend and work with the legacy Pinnacle and Colgan employees, legacy Mesaba employees will stand out as leaders. Like I said earlier, Mesaba has always been respected. I know we will carry ourselves across that “fence line” in such a way that proves why. In our hearts, we will carry that “Gordy Newstrom” spirit (Gordy founded Mesaba in Colaraine, MN in 1944). But on our black-and-gold sleeves, we will show new feelings of pride.