You didn't ask me, but...
I've been at XJT for over 18 years. Second career after the military. XJT had a good reputation for training and growth at that time. It has maintained the reputation for great training throughout the turmoil of the last 12 years. Growth has been taken from us through various efforts by other regional competitors during that time. Despite the dark times from '08 to last year, the pilot group has been great. Generally, we take care of each other and care about what we do for a living. As an Alpa pilot group, we defend our contract and don't let attempts by management to violate the contract go unchallenged.

Our hotels are good, sometimes great. Long overnights of 15 hours or more are downtown and nice. Short are usually nearer the airport but still good hotels with options for eating. Like most things in this career, there are always exceptions. There are a handful of hotel locations with limited options for food. Our hotel committee has been doing a good job of finding good hotels for us.

Pay is good but needs attention and we are expecting a new TA within the next month with improvements.

It looks like you are leaning towards Skywest by some of your posts. Having a union is important as an airline pilot. You will have protections for your career that the Skywest pilot group can't provide. Read some threads about this and you'll see what I mean. If you are young, you have decades of flying ahead of you in a working environment that can trip you up in various ways. Without a union contract to cover your decision making and union volunteers that will fight for you, you will be vulnerable to the whims of management/the chief pilots office. The Skywest proponents will answer that by saying that they have their own "pilot group association" and working agreement with management. The big difference is that their agreement has no teeth and won't protect you if something bad happens. There are plenty of stories on APC of pilots who have lost their jobs at Skywest with no recourse. To a pilot who is new to the airline industry it is common to overlook the importance of union representation in your career. Until you need it, you might not care. When you do need it, you'll be very thankful you have it. The Skywest pilots will also crow about not paying union dues. All I can say about that is "You get what you pay for." I can say many positive things about what Alpa has done for our profession. I can't think of one thing that the Skywest pilots have done. They benefit from a lot of hard work from Alpa volunteers but talk trash about Alpa whenever they get the chance. I'm about to get off-track here so I'll just leave it at that.

Bottom line, you won't regret coming to XJT. With the benefit of 18 years of hind-sight, I can definitively say that you may very well come to regret working for Skywest. When I think about what being a Skywest pilot represents to the industry, I know that I would have regretted working for Skywest.

When I retire in a few years, I want to look back at my airline career and feel good about the character of my work and the character of the company I worked for. After what I experienced at the hands of Skywest, I could never be proud of having worked for that company.

I have made various posts over the years about what Skywest has done to XJT, feel free to look them up. I am not shy about what I think of them.

Back to the subject. Yes, I like working for Expressjet! I am proud to call myself an Expressjet Pilot.