I am enjoying the 175 so far. Its very easy to land. The avionics suite is nice. Its a full generation more advanced than the C-17 in terms of VNav which is cool for me, but it seems like SkyWest chose not to purchase some of the features (I don't know that for a fact). The avionics seem like they can be a little clunky, but I'm new so still getting my feet wet and not super comfortable or proficient yet. Maintenance at SkyWest appears to be very good from everything I have seen so far.

Other than the pay, which is appalling given the level of responsibility 121 pilots have, I am very impressed with SkyWest and their operation of the 175. I felt that the training here was of good quality and challenging. But again, I'm new and I'm coming from the military world so I do not have a lot of pertinent experience to compare it to.

LAX is smaller than ORD, but roughly equivalent in size to SFO, and SEA. Larger than PDX and DEN. About 90 FO's. As of now, if attrition etc remains constant, everyone gets ORD first, and can hold their preferred west coast base approx 6 mos after their training start date.