In 2002 Continental Airlines announced an IPO for Continental Express. It was selling off it's home grown regional - partly in response to fears generated by the Comair strike against Delta, and partly as a revenue generating opportunity in the lean years following 9/11 - and Expressjet would eventually be born. This had actually been planned to occur in late 2001, but fortunately for Continental, they had not sold Express yet and were able to make full use of their resource for awhile longer.

In early 2003, Continental realized that as good as the RJ was, there were still some routes for which a turbo-prop was best suited. They approached Express management first to see if they were interested in returning any of their turbo-props to service, but Express declined. And so, Commutair filled in the gap with their 1900's out of Cleveland. ALPA, who had worked diligently to obtain health benefits, and severance pay for the furloughed pilots stepped in again - asking that our furloughs be given the opportunity to work for Commutair until such a time as they were recalled to Continental Express. This came to happen, and a number of furloughed pilots were given the opportunity to fly again - many even able to upgrade to Captain in the time they spent there.

In this time as well, ALPA opened pre-negotiations for Contract '04, with the slogan, "Taking Our Place" - determined to gain recognition for the quality product Contintal Express offered.

Shortly thereafter, Continental Express announced that they would begin recalling pilots, with the first class returning in May. This good news was short-lived however as only one or two classes returned before recalls were canceled.

That summer, Continental again asked Express if they would be interested in operating turbo-props, this time out of Houston - and again Express declined and so Utah-based Skywest airlines stepped in. Utilizing a combination of some of their own and ex-Express Brasilias, they began operating to many of the smaller cities that could not support multiple RJ flights. Once again, ALPA made their request on behalf of the furloughs and approximately 50 or so went to fly either the Brasilia or the CRJ for Skywest beginning in August of '03. Skywest would be replaced by Colgan Air and their Saab 340's about a year or so later.

In around September of '03, Express once again announced recalls and this time they happened, and they happened quickly, with nearly all of the furloughs returning by early '04.

This rolled right into official Contract negotiation time for Contract '04 - a long and arduous process that eventually culminated in what is [currently] the best contract of any "regional" airline, with many components the envy of the majors. While it continues to be fine tuned, and new gaps are discovered as the operation grows and changes - all in all it serves us well and should allow us to make a postive step in 2010.

Things operated fairly normally for a couple of years, but as is always the case in the airline industry; change is the only constant. Shortly after Christmas of 2005, Continental announced it was exercising it's right to remove aircraft from the agreement with Expressjet - 25% of the fleet to be exact. Their plan was to give these aircraft to subcontractor Chautauqua to operate primarily out of Houston. Expressjet decided to keep these aircraft and operate them independently, outside of the Continental system much, it seems, to the surprise of both Continental and Chautauqua.

Two thousand and six came and went in a seeming blur as details slowly came forth, both for Continental's plans, as well as Expressjet's. In the end, Expressjet elected to operate on multiple fronts, utilizing their new resources in a charter capacity, their own branded airline and offering their services successfully to other carriers such as Jetblue and Delta Airlines.

We find ourselves now in 2007 and things seem to be going well on the whole. When one considers the unprecedented steps taken over the last couple of years, it's exciting to see what Expressjet has managed to accomplish, and the future should be interesting to experience. Stay tuned.