The situation is a little bit of good and bad depending on what you want from ExpressJet. It looks like you're interested in the ERJ side and right now there's not much new bad news. We anticipate losing 80ish planes this year out of an original 220 from a year ago. This is obviously a big percentage but we keep losing CAs and FOs consistently so no downgrades or furloughs. We're actually losing more pilots than planes, so there's the need to hire. The company keeps bidding on new flying, but the 15 planes for AA has been the only new thing for the ERJ side.

With that said, we are not seeing a whole lot of quick movement. Plan on reserve for a while if you come here. We're losing about an equal number of FOs and CAs. This is both good and bad. The good is that a lot of FOs are not going to other regionals because the majors are picking up our FOs so everyone sees some kind of hope even if they don't upgrade. The bad is that we need FOs to replace people to upgrade, so it's making it harder to create any actual movement.

I think the company plans to stay around for a good amount of time. They're spending money on new EFBs and little improvements to our contract. The contract is still pretty decent but I wouldn't expect a new one soon. If you've been reading this thread, I'm sure you've seen the 2017 CPA expiration. Technically yes, at the end of 2017 either United or Skywest Inc could say they don't want these planes flown anymore. That's about 120 planes suddenly not flying from one day to the next. Skywest's bet is that in 2017, United will offer a better rate to operate those planes. The 2017 date isn't meant as the last day of ExpressJet, but for a new rate.

IAH has grown a lot over the years and it's now been shrinking little by little lately. That base grows and shrinks but right now it's on a shrink slope and there's no way to tell when the growth slope is coming back.

If you're coming here and OK with no quick upgrade but a better contract then I think it's a good choice.