A good choice for your friend to go with Compass. I wish I had gone there after I got furloughed from Mesa back in 2009 when I had the opporunity. I would have been sitting pretty commutting to a left seat RJ job and would have a guaranteed slot at Delta. I would have been nervous about the sale of Compass to trans states and I would have bet the farm that the Compass flow would never have survived the sale but it did.

Instead I went to SkyWest, which don't get me wrong, the quality of life and pay for a regional FO living in base is "relatively" good compared to other regionals (especially Mesa) but now I'm stuck. I'm 7 years a regional FO (Mesa & SkyWest combined) with no upgrade in sight for at least another 2 years. I turned down my recall at Mesa thinking SkyWest would win some AA flying and perhaps eat into the US Airways flying that Mesa has and an upgrade would appear shortly afterwards.

Instead SkyWest is stagnant and likely to shrink in the near future. I predict PHX will close and there will be no more US Airways or American flying. Our 200's and EMB 120's will leave property balancing out the heavy attrition we are sure to see. That will likely keep me at a stagnant seniority level or ever so slightly I'll creep up on left seat which will be years away.

Meanwhile my new hire classmates at Mesa while being recalled twice from furlough are now either sitting in the left seat or have a senior FO schedule.

While I regret my decision a little, I would probably still make the same decisions now armed only with the knoweldge that I had back then. However I will say SkyWest is night and day an improvement to work for compared to Mesa but hard days are ahead for us including the downward pressure on pay.

I guess what I'm saying is given the information today Compass is the best choice for your buddy but as I'm all too aware the regional industry changes sometimes aggressively and todays good choice could be tomorrows terrible choice.

Best of luck to him.

Airfix