It was a wild announcement for sure, and as one of the probably affected OO ERJ FOs, personally I am slightly upset but I would guess I am towards the unbothered end of the spectrum on that.

Forced upgrades aren't new at Skywest, at least they were into the same type before now. It makes sense business-wise, they have a basically unlimited supply of FO candidates and with the rest of the industry slowed down on hiring finally, the company can finally say "go where WE need you to or get out." They'll have numerous classes of new FOs to fill the void of people that quit or fail or otherwise. It will be interesting to see the split of people who choose which action. They're not forcing us to bid for CRJ slots, they're saying that to qulify for CRO pay at 750 hours we must open ourselves up to the possibility, though we can bid for ERJ upgrade slots before CRJ spots to get it. It will be interesting to see how many people. if any, refuse to put "ANY" in their bid to avoid the CRJ and the CRO pay, but still get forced to anyway.

I think alot of the fuss is being misinterpreted as people not wanting to get forced from the nice shiny jungle jet into the Deuce; although for some people that may play into it i think the larger gripe is the effects it will have on QOL. I doubt if the company cares that much but my guess is a small part of this might even be to cull the numbers of the few that will be simply unable to handle the aircraft transition, though I believe if a person cannot be trained to fly a CRJ with 1000 hours of 121 time already they probably shouldn't be an airline pilot at this point. But mainly QOL, especially for BOI, SEA,SAN, PDX and now AUS as they are ERJ only bases.

Personally, I'm going to stay put for now. I have about 5 months before I'll put my upgrade bid in, see how it starts playing out. I think the forced transitions upgrades are starting as early as next month, as I heard people had a confirmed class date but no location or fleet type yet. I'll certainly try to stay base/ type before my ANY bid, but if i get forced to switch and kicked out of my base I'll consider finishing the training, collecting CRO pay and taking a DEC sign on bonus at another carrier immediately after.

I'f I'm going to be forced to commute and switch planes to go back to the bottom of a seniority list, I might as well collect a bonus and go to a wholly owned with a union and a better chance of moving onto a major of my choice sooner.