FlyingKat

Of those three I'd say Trans States hands down. New management from Comair at TSA has made it a very nice place to work as compared to the past. New leadership in the Training department has made training at TSA a much more pleasant experience than in the past. Yes, Hulas still owns the place but it is a very nice place to work so far. Plus our contract is very good as well with leg by leg cancellation pay. The last two months I would have been down to guarantee without it, instead of getting paid 95 hours a month. Upgrade is pretty quick if you have the time. Right now its about 8 months, and rumors are it will go down to 6 by summer. But even if you get stuck in the right seat, the cancellation pay and pay rates make life bearable in the right seat.

However any regional you go to right now is a crap shoot. We'll see how the next 5 years plays out, but there are some pretty serious changes in store for all of us over the next five years.

sandrich

Edit to my previous post (too late to edit it now) I just assumed you were new to 121, I may be wrong (sorry, shouldve asked) If you have prior 121, TSA right now is a good option (see FlyingKat's post). If you don't have any 121 time, you're looking at a minimum 2 year upgrade there before you get that required time. Will TSA be around in 2 years, or will you be flushing 2 years of seniority/longevity down the drain? Who knows

Crawl

PilotJ3

I'm sorry to say this...

Regionals will not be able to expand, so you won't be able to upgrade quickly.

RAH was growing 47 airplanes, now they are parking 27. With only 29 more to receive this year, they will be surck for a while. C5 is shrinking and TSA, can't say anything because I don't know them.

If you're a New Hire in a regional you will not be able to upgrade, unless you are at least in the middle of the group.

Take a number and wait...

aprilcoconut

At CommutAir one and half year FO who had line before are put back to reserve pilot from next month.
It was about two year upgrade now, but with CLE closing, the upgrade will stop for long long , loooong time.

Duke990

This is not accurate. I've only been with C5 for a year and I'm a solid line holder. I am 50% up the F/O seniority list with upgrade still holding steady at 2 years, maybe slightly longer. CLE is not closing, it is downsizing. C5's operations are status quo right now. Read below. From management:

"Efforts continued this week to identify the impact to our operations once United concludes the "de-hubbing" of CLE early this summer. At present we believe it will take another week or two until we get the schedules beyond June from United. I can report we've had some very productive meetings with United this week and they understand our desire to communicate the longer term scheduling plans as soon as practical. There will not be a reduction in the amount of flying we perform for United - that is to say all of the planes we fly today will be fully utilized at other United hubs once the downsizing of CLE flying is complete."

All in all C5 isn't a bad place to work. The pay sucks but the people are great.

TallFlyer

That's not entirely accurate.

I've just gotten off of reserve in IAD and should have an FO line as long as I'd like and I've only been here about 8 months.

We've had 4-5 Captains leave for bigger and better things this month and a new upgrade class in April. The company is pretty sure that all our aircraft will remain flying for the foreseeable future, although anyone, from the CEO to the most Jr FO, who tries to tell today you what the airline will look like in 6 months is lying. That's kind of a scarey thing.

I will agree that the upgrade time is going to increase around here as it seems to be hard to keep FOs on property, as well as attract new ones.

TallFlyer

Beat me to it.....

Westerner

Great advice and insights. Any other random topics you can give advice on where you have no idea what your talking about?

10SNE1

What bases does Trans States have? Just STL and IAD? On their website it looks like they have ORD and PIT, too.