Originally Posted by RV2312

First post on the forum... Long but it'll help with understanding my questions I hope.

I'll be retiring from the Army soon, date not set but likely around Feb 2020. I'm thinking about SkyWest post retirement. Being a dumbass (and busy playing in the sandbox too) I didn't get my ATP prior to the changes. I have around 5300 airplane hours / 4,800 ME turbine and another 4000ish helicopter. I've considered ponying up for the CTP/ATP and applying to Alaska as well, even though the pay difference is huge, several factors sway me to SkyWest:

About all I've heard for years from SkyWest folks is good, seems like a nice company to work for, and QOL is important.
I flew out of Fresno for years and have a home in the foothills about 35 minutes from the airport. FAT looks very junior and I'm sure I could manage to get a lot of work done on the home around my SkyWest schedule, even early on. I plan to sell the home eventually and move out of CA, but there's a lot of work to be done first. Idaho is top of my list and I have two sisters in the Boise area.

So, since the CRJ is at FAT and the ERJ at Boise, I would expect that to be an issue. Boise looks pretty senior too.

If were able to get on with SkyWest in the CRJ and eventually want to base out of BOI, what kind of issues would I be looking at? I assume a training lock of some kind in the CRJ would be the significant point. I'll have a retirement check to supplement my income, so if it's comfy and I'm having fun I'd likely stick around long term and the upgrade time looks long at BOI.

So how long are you locked to an airframe after training? Any experience with the FAT and BOI bases? What am I missing? Any input is appreciated.