They are talking about the call that SAPA had with Shane included last week. He said they have a plan to shrink and a plan to grow and will act on one. The winner is going to be the plan to shrink. UA Is hellbent on getting rid of the 50 seat aircraft ASAP and this will help SkyWest return to its core value. But at the expense of pilot jobs in the next 3-5 years.

So does this make SkyWest a poor choice for a new hire? I have not much option IF I wanted to stay in N. California.

All regionals are a gamble in my opinion Songman. compass skywest horizon. You have to F one, Marry one, Kill one.

I'm just wondering if SkyWest shrinking is so obvious that even someone living in SFO should think about moving to get different regional. That's if one wants to live in base.

Come to SKW. SFO will be easy to get. Don't let the negitive guys get you down. Were hiring 100 a month (well trying to). There is always 2 plans. Grow and shrink. Been that for a long time. But we always seem to go with the grow option...

What if it's not an option? What if so many leave that staffing what flying is left is impossible? What if UA makes good on getting used 320/737 aircraft to replace as many 50 seat aircraft as they can (announced recently) what if more contracts get taken by other regionals who can fly the routes for cheaper. Remember. Skywest is contract feed and in some cases, they don't have "options". They take what they can if it works for them. As it is, attrition is starting to outpace hiring capability. And SkyWest hasn't won a major contract in quite a while. Not a good sign. Might sound negative, but to keep thinking any regional can just choose to grow in the current market is naive at the least.

Additional info

"On the express side, we want to replace many of the 50-seat aircraft in our fleet today. To do this in a disciplined manner, we are continuing to explore opportunities in the used aircraft market (737,A320) to replace these aircraft without appreciably increasing our capital expenditures. In addition to taking advantage of the used aircraft market, we are making investments in our existing fleet to extend the useful life and better utilize the assets that we have, as demonstrated by our recent decision to extend the life of some of our 767- 300s.

If this were to happen, which bases have the most CRJ-200's? Where would they see the loss of aircraft/flying? DEN? ORD?

I'm just fresh off IOE, but I have to say that I haven't a clue why SKW is trying to hire 100/month. Here's why:

1) Long sim delays mean that guys are getting paid (admittedly, almost nothing) to sit around for up to 8 weeks between training sessions

2) Looking at the reserve utilization for January, it's apparent that even the most junior reserves are hardly flying. I couldn't find anyone in SFO on reserve in the RJ who flew more than 12 hours in January (not counting IOE/OOE trips and trips they voluntarily picked up on their days off.) Heck, I even volunteered for ready reserve yesterday and today (since I'm sitting AM reserve anyways) and was told I'm not needed.

Sure, there's attrition, but it's not 100/month. If you include upgrades and resignations, SKW is losing maybe 30-40 FOs per month.

Perhaps all the growth will be on the ERJ side. And perhaps this reserve inactivity is due to the fact that the holiday flying season is over, and the bat guano will hit the air conditioner in the summertime. But from my very uninformed and limited perspective, we have way more FOs than we know what to do with...

January is always a low block month. Wait tell March!!!

Kfahmi,

This is the slow time of year. It will be MUCH different as summer approaches, which is what they're hiring for right now.