Is the career progression (success in being hired at legacy/major airlines) of Q400 pilots adversely affected by the fact that they’ve flown turboprops, rather than jets? Or do QX’s Q400 pilots advance similarly to their peers (ie, other regionals & QX E175 pilots) who fly RJ’s?

Understood that QX is transitioning to E175’s (and retiring the Q400’s), but this seems to be occurring on a timeline that’s TBD and has already had some unforeseen challenges affect the transition.

We've had a bunch of people go to Delta, SWA, etc.

121 is 121. Alaska has hired a bunch of Lakers in the past too flying 1900s. It doesn't matter.

The difficulty in choosing Horizon for the new guy is that if you go to the Q400 you will be flying an aircraft that is being phased out of the inventory, meaning you may be looking at short term future domicile and aircraft change and in the interim having to take the leavings as more and more of the longer routes go to the jet.

But if you go to the jet, every Q400 they do retire will shove about seven more FOs ahead of you in the bidding seniority for the lines available.

If the transition goes smoothly the extra extra e-jet flying that comes with the new aircraft ought to make that somewhat of a wash, but little of the process has gone all that smoothly thus far, IMHO anyway.

And the outsourcing of Horizon flying to Skywest is worrisome to say the least.

I found that prop 121 time alone was not enough, except for SWA. I observed after the brasilia retired at SKW, within one year former bro CAs were leaving in droves once they got a jet type and a few hundred hours to go with their years of prop experience.

There is more training risk for prop drivers going to an advanced jet. Although the Q is a lot more sophisticated than a bro.

Prop time is not wasted, all or almost all of the people in my legacy class had both prop and jet time. But I would have a plan to get jet time in your hip pocket if you're in a hurry.

If you're not in a hurry, they should be hiring everybody in five years.

Is there strong potential for Horizon to alter their domiciles (close and/or open) based solely on the transition from Q400's to E175's? It seems like the significant difference in performance between equipment could easily drive changes to the route structures or, at the least, schedules for pilots.

Is the outsourcing of flying to OO from QX indicative of real trouble for QX? (Would AS ever simply cut bait and sell them???) Or is this outsourcing simply a temporary solution to a near-term problem that QX can eventually solve & take back the 175 flying from OO?

Its a 12-15 year contract. And OO owns the aircraft. So unless they want to spend billions on new aircraft and get put of the contract some how, not going to happen. Bigger fish to fry. VX...

I would say does not matter. Look at the Jetstream 31, EMB-110 "Bandit", steam gage Metroliners, etc.

all those dudes paved the way to airlines before

Is this still true today, when almost 100% of regional 121 flying is done by jets?

The AS/OO agreement is a 12-15 year agreement? QX is already in contract to take on 30 E175's (with options for 30-ish more), right?

That's the problem. In the past majors hired prop pilots from commuters because that's all that was available on the 121 side.

Today there's so many jet pilots, who are less of a training risk. Jet time and multiple types help... a lot. The problem with single types is you might be a one trick pony, especially if you've been flying the same plane for 10+ years. It's not really a "rule", more of a trend.