On another post I answered about Eagle quality of life and kept it positive. With this upgrade question that becomes a bit hard to accomplish.

Been at Eagle almost 3 1/2 years. There was virtually no hiring between 01 and 04. So you'd assume that would drop the upgrade time from the current 7-8 years down 3 years to 4-5. You'd be wrong.

The last few months have had 30 captain openings, but last month had 21. Once you add in backfills it's more like 17 total seats to bid on. Now you may think that's not bad, and it wouldn't be at a smaller company, but there's almost 3000 pilots at Eagle. It's going to take forever to move up 1500 numbers.

Arbitration and flowbacks leaving for AA add up to about 400 more captain slots. However that's assuming the arbitrator rules in our favor. AA is recalling about 30 a month. That's 3 years to get them all back and get me to a point where I could bid captain. I realize there's quite a bit of resignations so let's assume I could hold prop captain in 2 years. That's 5 1/2 years to hold Saab captain and another year to hold jet. The divesture will likely slim down Eagle and raise those times another year or two.

Long story short, if you're looking to get hired somewhere right now Eagle is a great company. Just make sure you're planning to get a little experience and travel with the great benefits on your time off before you leave for greener pastures. Waiting at Eagle for a captain seat is a sucker bet.