Originally Posted by
ThreeStripe
ladies and gents, having come from a really crappy regional to the ASA side of ExpressJet, I can say that this airline does not deserve to fade away into the history books. The training was fantastic compared to the airlines that farm it out to Flight Safety, who only teach you to pass the checkride. The support from HR when you have a payroll question or benefits help is way better than the regional I worked for before. The bottom feeders that hire anybody with a heartbeat and are hostile to their employees are the ones that deserve to go under. I know the mainline partners could care less about quality as long as the price is right, but this place is doing the best they can for the pilots and other employees given what they have to work with. From my understanding, the L-XJT side of the house is also a very classy operation and if we ever get the two sides under one roof, we will have one fantastic airline (until the next regime change that is). I hope that 2018 will not be the end of this place. They have trained and will continue to train and employ a great pilot group.
Sadly all of this doesn't mean squat to mainline management, particularly UAL. Mainline carriers have gradually manipulated regionals to the point where they are not honest to god airlines anymore but providers of crews and seperate ground operations. This started in the late 90s with fee for departure when these companies stopped issuing their own tickets and has accelerated since. Now they can plug one operation out and another one in very easily. based on cost. These contracts have more holes than a swiss cheese so if you are looking beyond 2-3 years it is a waste of time. I defy anyone who has witnessed what is going on with UALs ground operations to tell me they give one crap about customer service in comparison to cost. These outsourced operations are horrible and getting worse, and UALs response is to outsource more to the same inept companies. The only silver lining to all of this is a growing shortage of people willing to invest the money required to get into this career, which may result in moving more of this flying to mainline. Other than that its not a great outlook for any of us on the regional side.