There is no scenario that I could foresee there to be a surplus of captains at Envoy. The last bid saw all that had the hours to qualify as captain given a captain slot. There is currently a standing vacancy for DFW 175 captains. That allows the company to hire direct entry captains. The company doesn’t have the training capacity to waste time putting someone through training twice, even for a condensed qualified upgrade, but I have heard conflicting information about Direct entry Captain training. Whether or not you start training as a captain or FO, if you have the hours, you will be a captain in short order.

There are three new 175 on order, about 17 used 170s coming to partially replace 145s. AAG is, as I understand, maxed out on scope for large RJ planes and there are VERY few more 170s ever produced, so don’t expect too many more planes at Envoy.

I think you have to have 300 hours in type as a captain to become a LCA. Can’t remember if that time has to be at Envoy. There may have been a few people in the past that were hired into CRJ or 145 that had PIC time elsewhere, but probably few that would have the 175 PIC time that would have been hired so nothing I’ve paid attention to.