Originally Posted by ShyGuy

Good for pointing that out. It's ironic for any 9E pilot to complain about GoJets and their growth today. All you have to do is go back in time to 1999. Pinnacle was Express 1, a virtually un-heard of airline that had a bunch of Saabs. Then the 1999 contract, aka jets-for-growth, was signed and started RJ FO wages of 16.xx and 2nd year 22-23/hr, with Captain pay not much better, first year ~ 50/hr. All of a sudden, Pinnacle was awarded a huge CRJ order from NWA, and the first CRJ came in 2000. From 2000-2006, Pinnacle took 140 CRJ-200s. From signing that utter P.O.S. contract in 1999, Pinnacle grew from a few dozen Saabs to 140 CRJs and no Saabs. The airline more than trippled in size in a matter of 5-6 years.

Fast forward to today, and Pinnacle/Mesaba is now one of the most senior pilot groups in the regional industry, with contract and training expenses above the regional industry norm. GoJets, a new entrant (think Pinnacle circa 1999) comes in cheaper and meaner, and stands to get tons of growth. So now people gets pi$$ed that GoJets is growing while another regional is shrinking? Were the pilots of Pinnacle, Comair, and ASA crying when they took dozens of RJs after 9/11, while mainline F100/DC9/737 pilots were hitting the streets?

In the end, this thread is a moot point. GoJets isn't doing anything that another regional hasn't already done in the past (take regional jets at the expense of someone else's career, be it another reigonal or mainline). The cycle repeats. In this example, back in the early 2000s, Pinnacle was growing at the expense of mainline NWA pilots, who were hitting the streets and. Today, GoJets is growing while Pinnacle/Mesaba is shrinking. Give it another 5-10 years, then GoJets will be a senior group, and they will lose their RJs to another new entrant that will start in 2017. The cycle basically repeats.