If what you want is to build a career as a pilot, aim at jet flying. However Turboprops seem like a lot of fun, altough very noisy and vibration after a few hours drives you crazy. I only had few oportunities to fly Turbprops. I flew as a copilot of a C90 twice (not really a required crew member), a Turbolet 410 twice and jumpseated in Bae J32s, beech 1900Cs and EMB120. ERJ's compared to CRJs (I fly CRJs never flown ERJs) they do about the same except that the ERJ is truly a regional jet. Obviously the CRJ200 and ERJ145 carry 50 passengers, but the CRJ is little bit more heavy and has better range with max pax. (CRJ200LR compared to ERJ145LR). CRJ200LR carries full pax for about 3 hour legs i.e. BOS-MEM. (at least during summer). ERJ145LR is much more limited to about 2 hour legs with full pax I think? (any ERJ pilots around?). Obviously CRJ700-CRJ900s are in a different category (togheter with EMB170-190).
The differences as a pilot, as told by a pilot that has flown both ERJ and CRJ is that the ERJ is easier to fly, specially for landings. CRJ200s approach (I call it dive) with the nose down and the flare is could be very tricky and is extremely sensitive to speed, if you come a little fast you're going to float along over the runway for a while. If the runway is long, it's OK but when you have a short runway you gotta watch out, specially in wet/ice conditions. Again I never flown a ERJ but they seem to be more "JET NATURAL" during aproach and flare, and just observing them landing you can tell. I've rearly seen an ERJ in a bad landing, but I defenetly seen a lot of very bad CRJ landings.Floating in ground effect, landing flat on 3 wheels (never me thoug
jaja ). I wish I had flown turboprops in 121 ops, but the truth is that even if I had the opportunity, career wise I would have still chosen a JET)
P.S. I heard from many Dash 8 pilots that DHC8s are really fun to fly.
Any Dash 8 pilots?