Originally Posted by
zscheidker
Thanks for the info! Obviously I won't apply until I feel like I am ready, which I do not currently. I've heard Republic will take graduates of certain schools with lower times, though I'm not sure if that's true, and I have taken the CRJ course at UND so that couldn't hurt my chances at least. And by 'a few months' I mean August at the earliest, the very earliest. I'm not too hung up about getting PIT as a base but somewhere geographically close would be nice; CMH, CLE, PHL, or EWR on either airline would be good options too.
As a fellow UND grad, I can't say I'm happier for picking XJET. If you're close to EWR than your all but guaranteed to get that base. I live on the west coast and am trying to leave EWR, but no one wants it since we are all Houston or west coast people.
Since I've started flying. I have gotten all my weekends off as well as Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years Eve and Day off. This is only after starting flying in September. This is all because of the pretty nice work rules that allow us to change stuff around. I have yet to actually hold weekends off at all during the bidding.
As for the upgrades at RAH, the one thing I've learned is the current upgrades don't mean a whole lot. Many factors are involved. The upgrades will only happen as fast as Captains leave for the other majors and if the company is growing. RAH grew a lot last year but you would have to assume they would keep doing that. Also a lot of the new upgrades will just now be starting to build PIC time, so they can't go to the majors right away. And even if the newest upgrade to Captain is JAN 2007, how many guys hired before him still need to upgrade. That person probably already had the minimums to upgrade, while someone hired before him didn't. You need to have ATP minimums to upgrade. Look at Mesaba, they are hiring street captains, so technically their upgrade time is only a couple months. But, how are you going to actually upgrade in a couple months without the minimums.
Basically, work where you live if you can, otherwise go by work rules, which at XJET is second to none. That is not B.S. either.