You must be a Mesa guy?! Did I miss the part where the 175 is no longer a
"Regional Jet"?....

I flew DFW-SFO..... I think the term regional can be used loosely here

Nobody really knows what's going on with IAH. It's all just speculation at this point...
A bunch of our 700's came off contract with United and are being re painted and flown elsewhere in the system. They haven't really said a whole lot about what bases these 700's where being taken from. IAH is an all 700 base so it's assumed that some of them are from there and therefore IAH may continue to shrink and possibly close. But again, all just speculation at this point.
The big question is will Mesa be able to continue to staff all those non-"RJ" Ejets?... Time will tell...

But that is 46% of the 28 Captains that left this month. 7 of the 24 from January were in the top 1,000 (38% YTD)

Also for 2015 year 81 of the 219 Captains that dropped off the seniority list were in the top 1,000 (37%) Currently being the top 1,000 is about 11 years of seniority.

So if 11 years is where we determine which pilots are lifers or super senior, is 38% (20 of the 52 that have left so far) a high attrition level? Seems fairly high but that is just my opinion. I know a couple of them that left and they were the ones that up until a year or two ago didn't really have much desire to leave.

Some people will leave no matter what. Some people will stay no matter what. It is up to the company to find that line where this is still a good place to be but it seems like SW is helping those on the fence by migrating the forced flying further and further up the longevity scale.

It's not 38% of lifers that left. It's 38% of captains that left that happen to be lifers per your post. Just to be clear.

Yup,
Any advice/predictive powers will be wrong by the end of the week. RAH BK and the inability of the majors to decide direction means exactly what I posted. Today's info/prediction might be valid for today, if you are lucky.

Dow:

DJNF
"8:50 ET - SkyWest (SKYW) is positioned to take incremental flying from Republic (RJET) now the latter is in Chapter 11 and looking to renegotiate contracts with American (AAL), Delta (DAL) and United (UAL), says Cowen analyst Helane Becker, even those pesky 50-seat jets that have sent part of the business to wrack and ruin. "Republic was not the first regional airline to file for Chapter 11, and won't be the last," she says. SKYW down 0.6% at $17.20 in pre-open trade. ([email protected]; @dougcameron)
(END) Dow Jones Newswires"

So yeah, EVERYTHING is in play.

I meant CRJ as in canadair (commuter) regional jet. The E175 is still a regional jet for sure. But as UA brings the flying back in house and eliminates the CRJ flying, the shrinkage will extend system wide.

There's a good deal of IAH flying that is performed by other bases. If I were a betting man I would bet big that IAH stays open as a crew base.

Better than some and not as good as others. When we have had good leadership, it's been good. When we had bad leadership, it was a disaster.

I don't think that 38% of the captains leaving coming from the top half of the captain list is high. I just picked the 1,000 as a nice round number and it is half of our captains. If you look at the top 500, not one left in January or February. I just don't think your argument that things are so bad that lots of senior guys are leaving holds water.

I think you are seeing a lot of people leaving/trying to leave, who said they never would, because they are doing the math and financially it makes a ton of sense. The time it takes to break even financially, by leaving, is much shorter than it was a few years ago. Also, the worry/risk of being furloughed has decreased significantly. Finally, when people who said they were lifers here see their buddies moving on, making good money, and enjoying their new job they tend to be much more willing to take the leap.