I'm based and live in DTW as well. As BATOL said I think Endeavor is your best bet man.

With the current hiring and worst case scenario attrition from the top (a contractual number that must go to Delta) you're looking at 3 years max for upgrade at Endeavor but you'll make $60k extra during those 3 years. Say you upgrade in 24 months at some other regional. Sure you make more as a captain but do the math... what's the total earnings over say 5 years?

There's also the living in base factor. Reserve is an absolute cake walk if you live in base. I've been on reserve several days this month and haven't touched an aircraft since April 1. Can you imagine sitting in a crashpad at ORD during all that time? I've been at home in my sweats working on stuff around my house and hanging out with my dog and fiance. Good luck doing that in a crashpad.

You could just move to a base at the quick upgrade airline I suppose. Good luck paying for that though on their pay.

There's many paths to take but the music almost always stops for awhile. Where do you wanna be when the music stops?

PM me if you have any questions about Endeavor. Go Broncos!

Thanks for the opinions guys,


Expat is probably not quite in reach for me. I'm qualifying for the rATP as we speak.

Do you really think an Endeavor upgrade would be 3 years? Isn't Endeavor shrinking, with captains flying FO spots?

It appears that the shrinking may have stopped. The last notice was vacancy (no displacements or downgrades, just upgrades) As long as the new hires keep coming (applications have increased significantly since the "bonus" was announced) the upgrades will continue. Though that is the case everywhere now. Upgrades are largely limited by new hires to replace the upgrading FO.

I've just looked through the attrition data here at XJT since January. We've had ZERO pilots leave us to go to Endeavor, not sure what your source is. As for the OP, XJT is not a bad place to be. Way better contract in comparison to Endeavor and DTW is one of our junior bases so your chances of getting it right out of training is high. Look beyond that retention bonus, remember it won't last forever. Good luck!

Junior maybe to get in, but there's guys 2+ years on reserve at DTW XJT.

Rumors of that at Skywest too and we opened a Mx base as well there now....

Everybody is basing DTW cos it's cheap and first year FOs love that !

This is true, once our IAD base was announced to close a lot of senior FO's fled to DTW making it more senior. However, I have met a lot of 9E FO's still on reserve after 7 + years, in DTW.

That's about to change after our last vacancy. Reserve will be only guys with less than about 4 years, still not great but definitely a move in the great direction. I'd imagine it will get down to guys with less than 2 years with the next vacancy. This is on the -900 at least.

I hope things get better for you guys at 9E, heck for all of us. During my DTW stint I joined a Crashpad predominately filled with 9E pilots and met a lot of good guys, wish ya'll the best.