Things change daily here, including upgrade times. Movement has started again as the mid to upper level seniority captain's are getting some corporate flying jobs and several captain's have been hired at XOJET with more waiting to interview from what the rumor mill has said. As far as FO's bailing, there are guys who are leaving before their 14 month contract is over (I'm guessing because they don't believe the company will come after them for it) to go to other regionals like Skywest, Compass and Pinnacle but from my experience this always happens whenever the other regionals really start to hire. It's the reason why Lakes has the training contract in the first place since guys used to come here and bail to Air Wisconsin after a few months.
There's plenty of posts here and everywhere else about Lakes. I would take the bad stuff and combine it with the good stuff and believe about half of it to make your decision. I've posted my opinions here about working for Lakes before so you can that for what it's worth but my only advice straight up to anyone is to do your research before you come so you don't find yourself in a position that you didn't expect to be in. It can be a really great place to work at times and a really crappy one at others. In the end it all depends on what you're willing to put up with to get your TPIC time. And don't believe the naysayers about TPIC in the 1900 or Brasilia being worthless. You may not get a job right away, especially if you upgrade right at 1500 TT, but I'd rather have that 1000 of 1900 or Brasilia TPIC in my back pocket instead of sitting on thousands of hours of RJ SIC time when I want to move on with my career.
There's plenty of posts here and everywhere else about Lakes. I would take the bad stuff and combine it with the good stuff and believe about half of it to make your decision. I've posted my opinions here about working for Lakes before so you can that for what it's worth but my only advice straight up to anyone is to do your research before you come so you don't find yourself in a position that you didn't expect to be in. It can be a really great place to work at times and a really crappy one at others. In the end it all depends on what you're willing to put up with to get your TPIC time. And don't believe the naysayers about TPIC in the 1900 or Brasilia being worthless. You may not get a job right away, especially if you upgrade right at 1500 TT, but I'd rather have that 1000 of 1900 or Brasilia TPIC in my back pocket instead of sitting on thousands of hours of RJ SIC time when I want to move on with my career.
