@ Natterjack :
After that multi piston episode I spent 3 years flying J31s round Europe myself, got about 1500 hours on them including 1000 left seat. I'm now in the right seat of a low cost airline (not Ryanair!)
Which is my point exactly, I did all that Jetstream stuff and ended up where I am anyway. Why on earth would you deliberately choose to go and fly the Jetstream now if you've got a Boeing or 'Bus job offer on the table (unless you actually WANT to fly turboprops all your life - and take it from me you don't).
Despite what every turboprop pilot thinks - and certainly a few of my old work colleagues keep on spouting the same old crap every time I hear from them and they've failed another jet job interview - the experience you gain on something like a J31 isn't actually all that relevant to the super automated glass cockpit environment, and above a certain hour threshold it's not that impressive to airline recruitment. Yes it's nice to have 500 hours of previous IFR experience before you get turned loose on a high performance jet, just to help with the situational awareness and understanding of IFR procedure, but that's about the extent of the skills crossover.
I had fun on the Jetstream but I don't miss it. At all. Not even .00001 percent. I probably work twice as hard here but I enjoy it twice as much so that makes up for it. It's just such a nice place to work and such a pleasant and (as long as you know your SOPs) relaxing airplane to fly.
As far as money goes, I know Ryanair takes a caning here on pprune and I don't want to speak on behalf of their FO's, but certainly with my present employer I'm making several hundred quid a month more in the right seat of the airbus than I did in the left seat of the J31 - and I've hopefully got another £1500 / month pay rise to look forward to before long if I get the command upgrade
As for you cavortingcheetah what a la-de-dah jetstream YOU must have had, to have cockpits that smelled of biscuit crumbs and coffee!!! Ours all stank of newspapers and fish and offshore oil workers' urine (don't ask
)