Originally Posted by Owlchemist

10 year CRJ XJT person about to leave here. I'll chime in with some of the doom and gloom they're talking about.

Both the CRJ and ERJ side of ExpressJet are mostly 50 seat jets for United and Delta. They're old and no one is making any more of them. United and Delta have said over and over and over they want those 50 seat jets either shrunk drastically or gone altogether.

The optimistic people will say that we'll replace those 50 seaters with larger aircraft and everything will be fine. What I see is the legacy airlines are pretty much scoped out in terms of 70-76 seat a/c. The only way to get more are to take them from some other carrier. The only reasons we'd get them from another carrier are cost or staffing. We're not getting them for cost because we're a senior airline with a good contracts. I'm skeptical we'll be able to staff any more planes. Both sides are shrinking fairly rapidly.

That said, both sides have good contracts and good crews. It's not a bad place to work by any means and we have excellent training. But don't come here expecting great news. In my 10 1/2 years I could count the times I've heard really good news for the airline on one hand probably.

Wherever you go will be a gamble. My advice is work where you want to live. Build 2-3 thousand hours and get the hell out of the regional world. Go to an LCC, a cargo carrier, or a national airline. Network hard and work on your resume/applications non-stop. Don't get comfortable at whatever airline you choose.