bcpilot,

hey, thanks a lot for the time you took to give me your thoughts but I need some clarification. First you say:

"I am not putting this 135 VFR job down get it NOW by all means"

But they you say:

"You can spend the next 18 months flying 135 giving joyrides & earning peanuts or prepare your self correctly & get hired in the next 6 months"

So what would you say "preparing myself correctly" would be, instructing for 50 to 100 more hrs (which could take 6 to 7 more months) and try to get on with American Eagle at the bare mins or go ram the hours in quick through this Saipan thing? Preparing for the ATP and becoming a real PRO is why I mention the year at Ameriflight (a 135 IFR single pilot cargo job) when my 18 month "time building" contract is up.

It seems to me like crawling towards another 100 or 200 hrs through instructing to reach bare minimums is a 50/50 gamble and if I lose, than I'm stuck in no mans land trying to get on a regional as a low timer competing with more qualified pilots; at this point in this hypothetical scenario, I'd be too far along to want to do this 18 month Saipan thing but any 135 IFR job will also seem pretty distant. On the other hand, if I get the 1500 in a year and a half (it's an 18 month contract by the way) come back to the states, fly a year of 135 single pilot IFR than I should be a shoe in for any regional.

If this were a couple years earlier I would say I'd go ahead and apply for my regional when I got back from Saipan but by then the ATP rule will be in effect.

So my basic quandary here is this: instruct to scratch my way to the bare mins HOPING to get a call and a hire from a regional I don't even really want to work at (ALSO, AE has a 2 year new hire contract so getting on with them would put me at Skywest or Horizon no earlier than 3 years from now anyway) OR, with plan B, have an almost a guaranteed (I use this word loosely) 2200 TT, 600 ME with an ATP (and plenty of quality IFR experience) by 2016. At that point I would be 26 years old.