Members of Polytechnic student government are reaching out to students who have reported continuing problems within the ASU professional flight program and its contractor, hoping students coming forward can bring solutions.
The problems, relayed by students since December, deal with maintenance of the planes and customer service issues from the program’s contractor, Mesa Air Group.
ASU’s Airline Bridge Training Program started in 2002 and was developed in partnership with Mesa Pilot Development, a program under Mesa Air Group.
The program allows aviation management students pursuing a focus in professional flight to obtain all required pilot qualifications, including flight experience, and grants students who have completed the program a preferential interview at Mesa Air Group, which operates Mesa Airlines.
In January, Mesa Air Group filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
“There’s a definite customer service problem — I’m hearing it,” said Dominick Hernandez, current president of ASASUP. “But I’m having difficulty getting the students to actually come together as a group.”
Hernandez said he’s been unable to identify the main issues because students involved with the program are reluctant to come forward with complaints because they don’t want to say anything negative about Mesa Airlines.
“I was trying to get an actual student to lead the other students in regards to the Mesa Airlines problem,” he said. “None of the students wanted to come forward because they didn’t want to damage their relationship with Mesa Airlines … because they are a source of references or employment after graduation.”
A former member of the Associated Students of ASU Polytechnic, who wished to remain anonymous in order to avoid hurting his relationship with Mesa Air Group, said when he dealt with the problem at the beginning of the last school year, he initially thought it was a price issue.
“It was more of a customer service issue in the way Mesa’s management at the program was treating students, and really how their maintenance was occurring,” he said.
The problems came to his attention when a large number of freshmen enrolled in the program expressed the desire to drop out and switch majors, he said.
The maintenance problems, which included lengthy repair times for planes, resulted in advanced planes being down for repairs for extended periods of time, he said. This prevented upper classmen within the program from completing their test flights, also known as check rides.
Because of this, upper division students had to use less advanced single-engine aircraft for their check rides, which meant many freshmen and sophomores lost their scheduled flight times, the former Polytechnic USG member said.
“Students would rather see … a more reputable airline come in to do the services for what they’re paying,” he said.
Because of the issues, he said he’s seen many students dropping out of the program, transferring to different disciplines or to the management side within the flight program.
The affiliation between Mesa Pilot Development and ASU began in 2002, said William McCurry, co-developer of the Airline Bridge Training Model and an ASU professor of aeronautical management technology.
Students who are having difficulties on either the academic or flight side of the program are able to contact the Flight Evaluation and Trends Committee, McCurry said in an e-mail. The committee is comprised of representatives from the academic side and the flight side of the program.
All flight students must also be enrolled in the Flight Operations and Safety course, he said, and the instructor of this course ensures that all issues are addressed as soon as possible.
McCurry said he is receiving only positive feedback from students this semester.
“We are getting outstanding results with the current group of freshmen students,” he said, adding that ASU’s hiring record with Mesa Airlines is outstanding.
Hernandez said he’s still trying to integrate student representatives who are enrolled in the flight program to better inform him of the issues, which appear to be ongoing.
“That’s the portion of students within that program that I’m hearing a lot of complaints from, but I can’t get a good grasp on them,” he said.
To this end, Hernandez plans on restructuring the format of student government at the Polytechnic campus and inviting liaisons from each of the disciplines within the school.
“I would love to have a flight student liaison as part of student government to give me feedback so we can work on this issue,” he said.
Reach the reporter at anatwood@asu.edu
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