Any idea how long it would take to hold LAX? Not too worried about sitting reserve forever, so long as I live in base.

I find this rather hard to believe. I will admit that I am new to SkyWest, but going into three months of flying here, captains that have thousands of hours of turbojet time are struggling to get a call from a major if they are not prior military-pilots.

One of my CRJ classmates bid for LAX and got it one month and a half after completing IOE (last month). I would say your chances of bidding for it successfully and receiving it within less than a year are fairly good ceteris paribus.

Doesn't sound so bad. Thanks for the info!

United et al have jets coming because they know their regional partners can't staff their fleet. The -200 is the new Brasilia. SkyWest will keep it flying because they make money on them and we'll keep flying as many as we can staff. Although some -700 are being parked or brought to other paint, there is no scope limit on the 50 seaters. You and others keep saying the sky is falling, but it's not. If you want a pilot job, you can have a pilot job. In other words, SkyWest will shrink, not because of what United tells us what to fly. We'll shrink when we can't find enough pilots. At least until the next big economic downturn.


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New Guy here,

I currently live in Houston & hoping to hold IAH eventually, but some have warned me it is a shrinking base and that alot of the 700s are leaving IAH and leading to a possible closure eventually. (I don't necessarily hope to hold IAH for a CA upgrade one day, but my goal is to live on base here at least while im an FO).

What are my best resources for understanding base shrinkage?
...I've heard many things from other friends warning me that trying to hold IAH is a dumb thing to do (1 SLC Skywest FO, a few envoy guys, and a mutual friend at Delta)... honestly i'm just not even sure what to look for or what questions to ask when considering whether trying to hold a line at IAH is a poor decision or not. Any help?

(yes I used search function, only found page 18 of this thread and one other page of relevance).

Thanks in advance, and sorry if this was a stupid question.

It's hard to say. There's always Mesa and ExpressJet if you really want IAH. I've also heard that IAH is going to remain open, albeit a very small base. This is to be certain to cover any flying one of our competitors can't do.

So 12 guys you have flown with in a pilot group are complaining about not getting called? Sorry man but 3 months is nothing and the amount of people you have flown with is a minuscule percentage of the entire pilot group. People are getting hired right and left. I just got a class date and I'm an FO with no military. The hiring is happening.

You can get Houston for now but who knows the future of the base? It's the only united hub we have that doesn't have 175's so it wouldn't be hard to see them bringing a few there.

Do not go to Mesa. That is a 50% pay cut compared to here.

And.........your wrong.

50 seaters are capped at 90% of the total narrow body fleet. ~475 total, that's if the whole UAX fleet was 50 seaters but it's not. So for every 76 seater, roughly ~2 50 seaters get removed. There is also a cap on the total RJs based on the total narrow body fleet.

The fact that JB22 watched the united network planning videos tells me he's not much of a troll at all. FYI the current plan is to shrink the RJ flying by 30% over the next 5 years and in a month or 2 there will be no RJs flying bewtween UAL hubs. Keep trolling the the lifers JB22!