Jumping into 121 regionals in the Spring.
 

Hey Guys-

Im about to go into the 121 world in the Spring and start doing my interviews and im trying to shift through all the politics and find the best one. I have friends in several different American Eagle outfits but all of them seem to think they are in the best setup. I think it is more they just don't want to admit there is another one that is better. Anyone out there have a broad enough view to give me which one is the best right now? I am flexible and going to move to my base I dont want to commute. I am simply looking for a fair deal, good group of guys where the planes are well cared for and the crews are happy. Any advise? I don't want to run all over the country doing interviews with each one to determine it. I would like to narrow it down to 2 or 3 and go interview with them and make a final decision.

Thanks!

Oh boy..........

Are your buddies sitting in new hire training?

all of them are at different stages some doing their initial, another on reserve waiting for their line, others have a line... so thats why I wanted to see if i could get an unbiased opinion on here.

I'd like to thank you for taking the time to post your question here. You've clearly done your research, judged primarily by the incredibly detailed question you asked. It wasn't vague at all. So, I'll advise you on the best possible choices.

1) Great Lakes
3) Comair
4) California Pacific
5) Atlantic Coast Airlines

First off, where do you want to live? West Coast, East Coast, Central US? That will make a difference in how you narrow down potential employers.

Furthermore, there are lots of threads on this very forum where you can go and wade through all the APC garbage to find some shreds of information that will be helpful in your search. Knowing a little bit of company history, and company's future plans will go a long way in helping your search.

I want to live in North Dakota and want to fly the E187. Which regional should I choose?

I appreciate the sarcasm, very helpful and constructive. All you did was list 4 regionals. I know the companies I am looking to narrow it down to a good one not just a list. I have friends in Mesa, Piedmont, PSA, Great Lakes I can name a bunch as well. I was looking for an unbiased opinion on the top couple to go. I know Great Lakes take guys at 600hrs and fly a bunch of /A, not exactly what I am looking for.

By spring it could be a new ballgame. Trans States is hiring cqfo's now but may be slowing by spring and only taking fo's. Like the previous post, determine what part of the country you want to be in and go from there, or pick a place you can properly learn to hate management! :rolleyes:

Thanks Cloud, I am flexible really on where I go. I am a military brat lived everywhere and have friends spread out so I don't reallly care where I am based. I am more looking for making the right move to get into flying RJs and where the pilots are happy and enjoying things.

Ok. Then choose Comair. They have the best contract in the industry, fly new CRJS and have a massive base in Cincy.

We need to know where you want to live and what your goals & priorities are: QOL, spouse, kids, career progression. I do agree that Lakes is not a good idea...their training system has no mercy and it's a big gamble with your career. A few of their captains seem to be able to get on with bottom-tier majors, but for the most part prop TPIC in a /A airplane with no automation is not what the majors seem to prefer right now. I know many lakes CA's, and they're all good people and fine pilots...but the reason I know so many is that they're all in my right seat.

Can I ask why we are actually taking this thread seriously? If every single prospective FO across the country came on here and asked, "hey dudz, which airline is the best" in a separate thread, the first 15 pages of the regional thread would be us trying to pull out of a new poster what they want.

Here's an idea, take a few weeks and do some real research, like college taught you how. Read threads, read news articles, look at the APC regional/national pages for bases. THEN, once you narrow down a list, post in the airline pages and ask specific questions.

........
 

Young man, do yourself a favor. Go back and get a degree in engineering or medicine and buy yourself a Pitts. You'll have a much better life

Anyone that is happy at any regional needs a psych eval

Because my kids are still asleep, my wife's at work, and I'm bored.

Also the statistics for APC (and other forums) show that for everybody who actually posts a question, there's probably 200 others who read and benefit from the answer. And since this industry is so dynamic, a one-month old discussion is suspect one year old advice is probably wrong.

If you aren't willing to spend the time to do even just a little bit of research on this, I don't forsee you having the motivation to make it through a 121 training program.

With that being said, good luck!

Yea I second California Pacific. Go there, you'll be glad you did.

Im sorry CB... clearly your life sucks and you're unhappy with it or you wouldn't be in here with all your negativity. I have been doing research and speaking to friends, but I'm getting so much conflicting information I decided to try a new route and see what people were saying in this forum to see if I could get something new. You aren't obligated to respond, you may notice everyone else has given some positive feedback or asking questions to assist me. We are all pilots and just like I gave new pilots in flight school my advise on what to avoid or how to make it cheaper, easier, more enjoyable; I wanted to see if this forum would provide me some additional information that I wasn't getting from my friends. I sincerely hope your Sunday gets better CB.

Typical APC garbage... More crap to have to filter through for the next guy looking... Maybe that's why he posted a new thread. Whenever I go to those individual threads it's like garbage garbage garbage garbage garbage whine whine complain regionals suck whine whine garbage OH-LOOK-A-USEFUL-POST garbage garbage whine complain why-am-I-working-at-a-regional? Complain whine garbage garbage garbage whine complain OH-LOOK-A-USEFUL-POST.....

This thread now looks just like that too. Great job, and I think rickair has a point, information is superfluous and constantly changing...

No thanks, do your research. There's plenty of info here.

It will be a while, probably a year and a few months until I am in your shoes and can agree with this. There is a ton of conflicting information out there about what's best and what's worst. One thing I do know is this aviation industry is a constantly changing game and what's best now may not be the best even 6 months from now. If I were able to get hired on now I would probably try to look at the future of each company you want to work for. Are they growing or shrinking? Are they having trouble attracting pilots or too much ease attracting pilots (possibly sitting reserve for a long time)? But chances are a year from now I will probably be doing the exact same thing you're doing now.

If it helps what my choices would have been as a new guy a month ago; it was Mesa, PSA, and Republic. Now with the potential TA at Envoy and the reshuffling of planes, at this point any option isn't an easy choice. The potential upside is the retirements at the top. Good luck.

Jumping into 121 regionals in the Spring.
 

Go where is the shiniest JET ! Lol ! And if they use Hat better ! #koolaiders

Also, using big words wrong doesn't make you sound smart.

I have no problem with people asking questions. I've seen many threads that were about choosing between specific regional airlines based on various factors. This thread SCREAMS of laziness. Hey guys, what should I choose. If you had put forth any effort at all, it would be obvious.

Also, I'm not angry. I'm actually really happy. Just because I question your motivation and refuse to play this game doesn't make me miserable. I'm not a recruiter. My job isn't to make you feel happy.

I've done my research, and continue to do so, but my observation stands.

I wasn't trying to sound smart... I goofed on that one. I always thought superfluous meant always changing. I can only imagine how many times I have misused that word in the past! Learn something new every day, thanks. If I could go back in time I would've just put the word dynamic in its place.

Fair enough. I mostly agree with that.

I never flew at a regional so I don't have first hand knowledge but I would think the ones that are hiring and have a growth plan would be your best bet. One thing I can say is get in get your time and get out!! I know plenty of guys that have gotten stuck because of QOL and pay.... I can't stand when I hear a 10 year RJ captain say I cant make the leap to delta, united of american because of the pay cut... You will make that up after year one!!

Become a WasteManagement garbage truck driver, you will make a living wage, never get furloughed, and you can keep any good stuff you find. You come to this chit show, you will wonder where your life went, just read most of the posts on any aviation site. The new hire posts are rosy with optimistic conjecture, at 5 years they are neutral and after 10 years you get this. Wonder why? Lots of chit to eat, to just hand fly an airplane for 10 minutes after t/o and 10 minutes before landing. No glory, no admiration, just night after night in crappy cheap hotels. Come on board and watch your aviation passion crushed out like the last cigarette in a day drinking bar.
Oh yeah, bring your own drinking water....

Skywest. Horizon. Compass. Those are the ones I would look at.

Jumping into 121 regionals in the Spring.
 

So wrong!!!

Great Lakes is not a good choice unless you already live there simply because they are limited to the region around the Great Lakes. All other regionals have a much greater operational area of coverage. Plus the 1900 doesn't have a door in the cockpit.

Comair stands a very good chance of being comaired. Sure, people say they're just threats, but why else would it be called being comaired.

I would avoid California Pacific as I don't think they have any planes with with tail mounted engines. Delta (717, MD88, MD90) is unlikely to hire you without at least 500 hours of tail mount time.

Atlantic Coast Airlines? Do you mean Atlantic Southeast? ACA is mainline, not a regional.

I would recommend the OP go to one of these 3:

American Eagle
Delta Connection
United Express

You have no friends at Eagle if they say it's the best. It's only second best.

When I was in your shoes 8 years ago i had a very smart professor tell me this during a long conversation.

"This is a very funny industry, you are going to have friends that go one place and upgrade very quickly. You will have friends that get furloughed. You will have friends that go to a company that shuts down or in this day gets purchased, merged, torn apart, etc. Go to every interview you can get. Why? Well you don't have any decisions to make until you have an offer in front of you. This also allows you to get a lot of very valuable interviewing experience. So then which one do I choose? The one that offers you a class first. You live and due by your seniority number."

I know some of that conversation is out dated but I believe it has some very valuable lessons for everyone coming into this industry. So my advice, go to as many interviews. Get a feel for each company and make a decision from there.

Here is how I see some of your choices.

PSA - Growing at the expense of other companies. We will see if they actually get all the jets they say they are getting. If I had a dollar for every time I heard "we are getting X amount of jets" I wouldn't be in this business anymore. They have a quick upgrade right now which is good. They have a interview program that has about a 98% success rate. To my knowledge of those successful they move 48 to American per year (4 per month).

Mesa - I don't know a whole lot about them, just their reputation precedes them.

TSA - Growing at the expense of another company. They have a CQFO program that won't do you any good as you will not have the time to be a part of that program. They are owned by ruthless people. Do your Go Jet research and see how that whole thing worked out for TSA.

Compass - Griwing from pure growth, not taking any airplanes that are at other companies. They have many pilots that are flowing to Delta creating guaranteed movement. Once that is over well that is the wild card as to what happens as far as upgrades. The company is good, the people are good and there is a lot of 121 experience there. That meaning most if the pilots there compass wasn't their first rodeo.

Endeavor - Shrinking to a point then what? Who knows what is going to happen there once they get down to 81 900s. What is known about them is they have the most movement to Delta than any other carrier in the world. They will send 144 guys to Delta next year and those numbers keep going up in the following years. They just signed a deal making them the highest paid first two years in the industry. They have a fantastic training department, regarded as one of the best in the industry. If they can hire I would say the sky is the limit and you can expect not to be an FO after year two. Most of the bad press Endeavor gets is from former employees that just relay information from their negative friends here.

With all that being said, there are a lot of choices out there. Take what you read with a grain of salt. Again take as many interviews as you gan get and go get a real feel for the company when you are there. When you are traveling to the interview ask their employees questions and really get the temperature of the employee group.

Good luck with your career. It is an exciting time to be joining this profession.

Thanks Sturb!! Very useful advice I appreciate it!!

This is soooo true!

It's sad that I've actually worked at half these companies. I'd still recommend both though, without hesitation!

Agree with everything in this post except the outlook for Endeavor.

Everything thing above has been stated before.

Interview everywhere. Get job offers. Then make decision. Period.

It is extremely presumptuous to narrow your options prior to even getting called/invited to an interview. No one is THAT good...

Your editorialization dilutes your facts.

Compass is also owned by Trans States Holdings, the same company that brought you GoJet, yet you say nothing about how bad that company is. In fact, their DO is the same guy who was responsible for a lot of the poor treatment most TSA pilots complained about in the mid-2000s. They are also growing at the "expense" of another pilot group. Technically, the E-175 aircraft were the ones promised Eagle pilots in bankruptcy, yet you don't mention that.

The airplanes TSA is getting are ones that were slated to be parked. To group TSA in the same group of PSA over-simplifies the situation. Technically, anytime a regional airline grows, it is at the expense of someone, whether it is a major airline or another regional.

This is why these threads are worthless. Your advice, while good intentioned, is bad.

I am going to be getting my commercial and flight instructor ratings within the next month and a half. With the pipeline program that Envoy has, would it be wise with Envoy's potential new TA to try to get on board with them soon? Or still wise to hold out and wait till I'm closer to the 1500 hours and go for the best option at that time?

Disclaimer: Will be living in Dallas for the next 5 years probably so that is why Envoy is definitely an option for me.

Thanks!

All good points, sir.

Just a few follow up questions for you.

How many CRJ-700s does Eagle have? How many E175s? See my point Eagle doesn't have any E-175s so how is CZ taking their planes when they don't have any?

Depends on how you define "taking." How do I define it?

AA: If you sign this contract, we'll give you Ejets.
AE: Ok.
AA: Okay, if you don't sign another concessionary contract, we'll give those Ejets we promised to Compass.
AE: No
AA: Okay, Compass, here are those airplanes we promised Eagle.

Since Eagle is owned by American and American promised them airplanes, it is a different situation than other sub-contractors. I don't think Compass "took" anyone's flying as much as I don't think TSA did. PSA? Well, we know they took a weak contract with promises of airplanes with full knowledge that they were being leveraged against the Eagle pilot group.

Again, that's why your simplification doesn't tell the whole story and makes your summaries inaccurate. My original point stands.

If you want to live on the west coast go with:

SkyWest, Horizon, or Compass (but SkyWest and Horizon will have a longer sit on reserve and a longer upgrade than some of the other regionals right now. And many people have had a hard time even getting a call interview from a compass without prior 121 time).

If you want to live on the east coast go with:

Too many to list. Many are hiring and have future growth and fleet plans. Some are shrinking and their future is questionable at best. Asking a forum full of pilots which airline you should choose is like asking a room full of 3rd graders which flavor ice cream is their favorite... You are going to get a lot of different answers for different reasons. I chose my airline because I own a house and have a family and my domicile will be a relatively easy commute from home. Others choose airlines based on quick upgrade, quality of contract, pay, etc... There are a million different reasons. Figure out what you want and take your pick. It seems they are all hiring for the foreseeable future.