Without flow/preferential hiring agreements or more-desirable bases like LAX/DEN/ORD (or even IAD--ANYWHERE but South Texas), I think we're going to have a tough time staffing the next 15 EJets.

A more pessimistic person might say "we're screwed."

With the fairly-solid flows (by historical standards) being offered up by Envoy, Piedmont, PSA, and now CommutAir, and the vastly better pay (and equalizing upgrade times) at places like Skywest/TSA/Compass (oh, and all of the places with flows), it has become mighty tough to convince a new hire to come here.

JO isn't going to offer us more pay. He might throw a few thousand bucks at new hires or in referral bonuses etc., but we didn't get these EJets by bidding average cost. They'll just tell UAL we can't staff it if we can't at the cost we bid it at, and cancel the deliveries we inherited from Republic if we eff it up.

I'm an optimistic person and I've been a Mesa cheerleader for a long time on here. But "better" base options and/or preferential hiring agreements are the only things that are going to bring Mesa up to par with what other regionals are offering (at the costs we've bid our flying). And I think we've already scraped the barrel from coast to coast and around the world in terms of recruitment, and then some.

A DEN/LAX/SFO/ORD base would probably buy us enough allure to cover the next 15 EJets and backfill the upgrades. Alternatively, a preferential hiring agreement with United (similar to CommutAir's) would solidify hiring for the next few years going forward, and stabilize attrition. Can our management team see/secure that? Who knows...time will tell.

I don't see us staffing the next 15 EJets unless a preferential hiring agreement or additional EJet bases are announced. It's going to be a fun winter if our higher-ups don't see that writing on the wall (God love 'em I hope they read this). Us average line Captains have very little say in decisions like opening a new pilot base or not, but we sure as heck have the realtime pulse of the FOs and what they're thinking, saying, and planning on doing--all of the above is my anecdotal assessment of where thing are heading w/o a flow/preferential interview with ANYONE and w/o other EJet domiciles besides IAH.