There have been folks who have gone directly from AMF to the majors. Is it common? I guess that would depend on how you are defining "majors" and "common." If you look under the "Major-National-LLC" list for general airline information here on APC, you will see Southwest, one of the largest airlines in the country as well as Skywest, ExpressJet and American Eagle, all generally referred to as "regionals."

I personally don't know anyone who has gone to any of the Legacy carriers from Ameriflight. (Heck, I don't know much of anyone that has gone there PERIOD in the past 10 years.) But I know several who have gone to Southwest (though not for about 7 years), 5 or 6 that have gone to Allegiant in the last couple years and even one that got on with UPS about 5 or 6 years ago. There have also been quite a few that have gone to Skywest.

One thing to keep in mind when considering the Ameriflight vs regionals question. If you go straight to the regionals, it will be quite some time before you will be logging any PIC time. Every major I have looked at requires a minimum of 1000 hours turbine PIC time. So even if you believe, as some do, that 121 time is a plus for getting to the majors, you might consider AMF to get to the 1000 turbine PIC mark and then make the switch.