SkyWest hasn't flown the Braslilia since 2014, but they are a good company that is likely to survive a very turbulent period for the regionals.
Some questions first for
@HokiePilot:
- How much total time do you have?
- How much multi/turbine PIC time do you have?
As others have said or alluded to, the three things you should care about when picking a regional are bases, upgrade time, and pay/sechedules. You also need to consider things like bonuses and flow, but they shouldn't be anything more than a tie-breaker. In some instances, the flow program can be the *loser* in the tie breaker.
Bases:
Why do bases matter? Because your commute is going to be the #1 contributor/detractor from your overall quality of life as a regional pilot. A good commute to an average job is superior to a hard commute to a great job. I'll tell you my deal: I live in Vegas, and I retired from the USAF non-current and knew I was going to have to do some regional time. The "west coast" regionals currently in play are Skywest, Compass, and Horizon. From a commuting standpoint, here's how they stacked up:
- SKW: Junior bases were ORD and MSP, but 6-12 months down the road I could hold KSFO, which is an easy 1-leg commute from KLAS
- Compass: Junior base is KLAX, which is an easy 1-leg commute from Vegas
- Horizon: Junior base was Medford (not sure what it is today--that equation has changed a lot in the last 2 years), but Seattle and Portland were both attainable in 6-12 months. Medford is a 2-leg commute from Vegas.
Winner: Compass
Upgrade time:
Your objective is to get over to the left seat as soon as you can to both start building MTPIC time (if you don't all ready have the "magic 1,000 hours" of MTPIC), as well as make yourself eligible for other qualifications like Instructor or Line Check Airman. For me, as a fighter dude, I all ready had 2,500+ MTPIC, but I saw upgrade as my Plan B if I didn't get hired by a career destination airline. Here's how those three shook out (again, this is in 2015, so numbers are different today):
- SkyWest: at the time, something like an 8-year upgrade
- Compass: 6-12 months for someone with the requisite minimum qualifications. As a military guy with more than 500 hours in military multi-pilot airplanes (King Airs) I only needed 500 hours of 121 SIC time in order to meet upgrade qualifications. In reality, I could have upgraded at 9 months.
- Horizon: 4-7 years at the time to upgrade.
Winner: Compass
Pay/Schedules:
This wasn't very important for me, because I was planning on only being at the regionals for 2 years or less, and I had a military retirement to buffer the pain. I figured I could suffer through just about anything for 2 years, because I'd been financially planning on it for years and built up my savings and had no debt.
Pay is a moving target, though. When I was applying, SKW paid $30/hour, Compass $26/hour, and Horizon $31. SKW and CPZ have both bumped up their pay in the last year (and, of course, the AA wholly-owned regionals PSA/Envoy/Peidmont have bumped theirs up to $40-something a couple months ago). Given how things are changing, if you're at a regional more than a year, chances are that pay is going to go up.
There is not really much variation between airlines with respect to schedules. Bigger airplanes (E170/E175, CRJ-700/900) are going to fly longer legs and less legs per day, generally, than smaller airplanes (CRJ-2, Dash-8s, etc), but that's only a marginal difference. It is true that the real QOL is to be found pretty deep down in the work rules, trip rigs, etc, but honestly I don't know that it is worth drilling that deep to make a decision. All regional schedules suck ass for junior guys, so all the flavors of shit still taste like shit.
Flow/Bonuses:
Again, not a player in my decision matrix because I was just looking to get re-current, then head off to a career airline. There was only one airline with a bonus, Endeavor, and required you to be there a while to get it. The bonuses are attractive, especially at the AA wholly-owneds. The problem with bonuses is that they are not enduring (only available one time, or for a couple years, etc) and since they are not actual contract provisions, they can be rescinded at any time. Be careful picking based on "pay" that is actually a bunch of conditional bonuses thrown in on top of regular pay. That being said, as has been posted, some of those bonus-enhanced airlines have first-year pay approaching $60K, which is awesome.
Flow can also be a double-edged sword. The problem used to be that if you worked at an airline with a flow agreement, the mainline partner would not interview or hire you out of seniority order. For a military-background guy, that's a negative, because you're going to be eligible to get "the call" before your seniority list civvie peers. My understanding is that this provision has been removed from the AA flow agreements now. As others have said, it is a valid "plan B" if you don't get a call to The Show, but realized it could be a *decade* before you actually flow to AA.
