135 does not necessarily pay less than most 121...especially regional level. 30,000 a year is an average starting point and then you will be building PIC time in the 135 with the opportunity for turbine advancement very soon if not immediately. Some seem to forget that not everybody wants to deal with some of the nonsense that goes on in the 121 airline industry.

135 won't be going anywhere, and I suspect that we won't have trouble finding qualified applicants either; we haven't had trouble so far and the regionals have been hiring fresh, warm bodies for quite some time now. In fact at my company, the last groups of people that we hired have had substantially more time than any regional airline "prefers", let alone requires.