If you don’t feel you are ready to upgrade it puts you in between a rock and a hard place. Either go through with the upgrade and do you best to pass it and hopefully keep your PRIA file clear or quit and go to a different company to for a guaranteed clean PRIA.

 

1. You are going to have at least 18 months to prepare for an upgrade. That’s going to be 300 nights in a hotel room (give or take) when you could be studying for it.
2. That’s 1000 hours with likely at least 700 hours above 10,000 feet where you can be pumping your CA for what you need to know for the upgrade rather than talking about sports or which FA is the hottest.
3. And yeah, you COULD go to another company although that might require going to a different airframe (and certainly another training event) and - even if not - the standards there might be different even for the same aircraft but just close enough to your old company to foul you up.
4. And seriously, do you want to explain when you are interviewing at a major (or even another regional because they WILL ask) that the reason you quit your first company as you approached 1000 hours was that you were unsure you would be competent to upgrade and didn’t want to risk a black mark? That’s really not the TMAATT you want to impress them with.

 

Yeah if you're legally even eligible for a forced upgrade, you've had plenty of time and experience to prepare.

Many folks say that if you're not CA material and motivated to be a CA that you have no business in airline aviation. I don't necessarily agree with that however seniority is a thing in airlines and it is possible and common to be junior-assigned into a position you'd rather not be in... whether that's a reserve assignment, a base, and plane or even the left seat. If you're the junior-most person who is *qualified* for upgrade then that's how it's going to go.

If you work for OO, they've always been crystal clear up front that they hire future CA's, not SICs.

In this climate if you really want to be a career FO that is an option... go from regional FO to ULCC, settle in and get comfortable. They won't force you to upgrade (unless their attrition gets *really* bad).

 

I think that for a long time the regionals accepted career FOs who had a side hustle - even FOs who saw their airline job AS their side hustle - because with CAs aplenty and the majors not hiring many pilots they could afford to do it. Now they can’t. They can’t keep CAs and are CA limited and can no longer afford to burn 121 SIC hours on people with no intention to upgrade. It ain’t personal, just business.

 

As they say its just business'..