I'm hoping he got caught out in SGU and they shut him down.

A good choice for your friend to go with Compass. I wish I had gone there after I got furloughed from Mesa back in 2009 when I had the opporunity. I would have been sitting pretty commutting to a left seat RJ job and would have a guaranteed slot at Delta. I would have been nervous about the sale of Compass to trans states and I would have bet the farm that the Compass flow would never have survived the sale but it did.

Instead I went to SkyWest, which don't get me wrong, the quality of life and pay for a regional FO living in base is "relatively" good compared to other regionals (especially Mesa) but now I'm stuck. I'm 7 years a regional FO (Mesa & SkyWest combined) with no upgrade in sight for at least another 2 years. I turned down my recall at Mesa thinking SkyWest would win some AA flying and perhaps eat into the US Airways flying that Mesa has and an upgrade would appear shortly afterwards.

Instead SkyWest is stagnant and likely to shrink in the near future. I predict PHX will close and there will be no more US Airways or American flying. Our 200's and EMB 120's will leave property balancing out the heavy attrition we are sure to see. That will likely keep me at a stagnant seniority level or ever so slightly I'll creep up on left seat which will be years away.

Meanwhile my new hire classmates at Mesa while being recalled twice from furlough are now either sitting in the left seat or have a senior FO schedule.

While I regret my decision a little, I would probably still make the same decisions now armed only with the knoweldge that I had back then. However I will say SkyWest is night and day an improvement to work for compared to Mesa but hard days are ahead for us including the downward pressure on pay.

I guess what I'm saying is given the information today Compass is the best choice for your buddy but as I'm all too aware the regional industry changes sometimes aggressively and todays good choice could be tomorrows terrible choice.

Best of luck to him.

Airfix

Not going to work for a Hulas owned and operated outfit is the real "no-brainer"!

By all means, feel free to make a career decision based on two business men you will never meet.

Or look at what direction each's company is going in over the next few years.

Looked at the direction, and heard all about how he treats his employees from many friends that worked for him...

You make it sound like it's a small business with the boss standing there breathing over people's shoulders.

In the end, these places are like ATMs. People go there, do their job and then they go home.

There's no Bill Lumberg a few cubicles down to impress. There's no politics.

Show up, fly the thing safely within FARs and FOM, and go home. The paychecks from all the regionals arrive on time. That is really what it is for, because none of them are predictable enough to be for anything other than that.

This section of the industry is entering a full blown crisis if you haven't noticed. In fact it's already well underway.

An opportunity for a 12-14 month upgrade is rare and the person that this thread was about apparently has a new hire spot locked in.

Like him or not, Hulas has things set up quite well in the next few years compared to SKYW. It may be a house of cards, but not any more than anywhere else. So why not go to the one that offers incredibly rapid advancement?

I don't make it sound like anything. I've been told by far too many friends what a nightmare working there was, and would never consider it under any circumstance(even with your apparent SJS affliction)!

Working where TSA or Compass? BIG difference.

I have no affliction and I really don't care where the pilot in question goes. But I can always take a minute and correct misinformation.

The differences in progression that the opportunities that this pilot is presented with are so vast that this thread should barely even exist.

New hire class to left seat in 365 days.

Sometimes a temporary anomaly in the industry happens and that is one of them.

The Fracasa at SkyWest is challenging 15-20 minute ride in a very touchy sim. In my group, the current 121/135 guys did not have to do the sim ride. I did, and so did a CFI based on the logic that I wasnt current and that CFI's watch a lot of flying without actually doing a lot of that flying. I'd recommend 5-7 hours in a 141/142 if you can get it.