Says who? JO? Why can't the regionals be glamorous, or at least livable? Who said we have to work your asses off? Management? Stand up for yourself! As far as the bigger and better thing, none of them are hiring right now, did you notice? In the meantime, we just sit in the doldrums, working our asses off and living on non-livable wages. Is that what all of you that disagree with the rest of us regional pilots want?

The example is this. I used to work for ExpressJet, a regional with a leading contract, great QOL and the highest 50 seat pay out there. Got it?

Now, Continental was able to find other regional pilots who would work for less at Colgan and CHQ and therefore I was furloughed from my second year at ExpressJet. I was on pace to make over $45k my second year. I wonder if Colgan FOs are able to do that, while flying 74 seats?

If Continental knew that they couldn't find underbidding pilots to fly larger aircraft, then they perhaps would have given the new flying to ExpressJet in order to have a more efficient operation. But nope thats not how it works when one union's members underbids another.

The same story applies to Mesa. Mesa has underbid regionals at almost every major carrier all because they allow their management to. How does JO do it? By forcing you to 'work your asses off'. In the meantime you put higher paid pilots out of work.

I guess there will always be people that disagree with the standard of fee for departure pilots, and those people usually go work at places with sub-standard pay and work rules.