I know a lot of people who have been hired at XJET in the last 9 months (I was one of them)...There was a period in Dec '04, Jan, Feb, Mar of '05 where there were a lot of 600-700 hour pilots hired. (Maybe an average of about 5 people per 32 person class). However, there were a lot of problems with these classes during training and IOE, so they were a lot more selective in the classes that came after that, and they could be because Independence, Chicago Express, Etc. had put a ton of experienced 121 FO's (and CAs) on the street. A lot of these guys (and girls) were from All ATPs and some were from other places. The All ATP guys in my class were at about 700 hours TT and were some of the best in our class (probably due atleast in part to their extremely high multi-time)...The other low time guys, did not do as well but I believe that they all made it through. However, to say that XJET is hiring a bunch of low time pilots is a false statement. The average time of the pilots in my class, the class before me, and the three classes after me (160 newhire FOs) was about 1100-1200 hours TT with about 100-200 multi. I knew or atleast talked to most of the 160 people (I spent 2 1/2 months in the dang Holiday Inn with them) and I would say that no more than 30 of them had less than 800 hours. This has all but stopped today...Our HR department will not give you an interview with those qualifications right now. However, thats not to say that there are not a few exceptions to the rule, but the classes in training and in IOE at the moment are almost exclusively former 121 pilots with some charter and corp. mixed in. It should also be said that our union went to bat for the furloughed Indy pilots, by convincing our management that it would be beneficial to give preferential and expedited interviews to these guys...I am glad that they did because getting furloughed sucks...I know, and I am glad that we could help them out.
As far as the work environment at XJT...It is unbelievably awesome. My Chief pilots are awesome...They have helped me out a lot. Some times I have to remind myself that they are the enemy...MANAGEMENT. j/k I am very happy here...It is a lot better than my former 121 employer...NIGHT AND DAY. However, everyone that I know at CHQ loves working there too...Same with Skywest, Air Whiskey, and ComAir. I have good friends at all. I also have good friends at Eagle, Mesa, TSA, and Pinnacle...None of them have anything good to say about their companies. However, I have not worked at any of these companies so I am not trying to bad mouth them except for Mesa (the company, not the pilots) and their CEO, Johnny O <~~~~not a fan of this dude!