sfoquioter - After 4 or 5 years with a company, and especially after you upgrade, most people become mired into it's crap and cannot just simply walk away.

Until you can make the 'right' breakout move, you have to bide your time and suck it up. I'm sure when the legacy of their choice calls most of these guys under 45 would leave. But a 5 year FO is at least going to give some serious thought before he/she just walks on 80K a year. People have lives, bills, kids in school, mortgages. And what about a 10 yr CA making ~150K? Where do you suggest they go? Over to another LCC at first year pay? Back to the regionals?

Young guys with low longevity can leave more easily, and I'm sure they are piling out in droves. The guys deeper in have one choice - to fight like hell to make it better, and leave only when one of two things happens: The price for staying becomes too costly... i.e. losing their family over it. Or the reward for leaving becomes more lucrative than staying... i.e. the right legacy calls.

This is why they're cautioning you so intently about going there, because once you start, the process of eating you (the years of your life) begins. And know this, if you're thinking you'll just grab some Jet time for the resume and springboard to the next place, you're only just feeding the beast, and it can turn around and eat you with the rest of them before you realize what's happened.