TL : DNR -- glad I went to the presentations, don't try to game the system and stand in United's line more than once.
Ok, I'll answer my own question since I ended up going. For the most part, these forums had already nailed most of what the companies talked about so I'll try to limit to a few highlights.
The FAPA guy started with his rules of engagement brief. At the time I poked a bit of fun since it was complete common sense and I kind of felt like my 2nd grade teacher was berating me for cutting in line at lunch; however, after some shenanigans during the latter part of the day I have a feeling his speech will be longer next time. I'll address this at the very end since it's quite important. Other than no coffee and not enough water, I thought the event was well run.
The Virgin America presentation was entertaining and informative. The HR guy claimed the last 2 classes of '13 were cancelled due to lower than expected attrition from furlough recall. He also confirmed Virgin would hire approximately 25 pilots in '14 and that they would be lowering minimums to 2500 hours.
The United presentation was extremely well presented and probably the best of the day. The presenter wasn't willing to give significant hints towards how your airlineapps application is scored; however, he did recommend updating once a month. He also clearly defined United's definition of "current and qualified" as 100 hours in the last 12 months, and they don't care how you get it -- 100 hours in the Traumahawk is current and qualified! I also had assumed since the last few classes have sent all new hires to EWR/IAH 737s that all future hires would do so -- that was not correct. Charlie mentioned that both Airbus and legacy 757/767 would be available to new hires depending on vacancies. Also extremely cool, he knew that even with 15 recruiters there was no way that they'd get through all people by the 1700 scheduled finish and promised that every single person who came to see United, would -- my guess is those guys probably didn't finish until after 2000.
US Airways was a major disappointment. I think the most common topic of conversation among the job fair attendees was how the hell could FAPA charge a hundred bucks a head (with 600 people paying we're talking $60k gross) and not at least supply coffee and enough ice water to last past noon. The 2nd most popular was WTH just happened when the US Air guy got up and talked
. The captain presenting looked like he'd never seen the slides before and he was constantly shuffling through his paper version of the slides. There was very little new information and they were unable to answer/fix any questions about problems people have been having with the online application. The one piece of new information to me and folks I spoke with: apparently getting an interview is 100% random. They have a very large pool of qualified applicants, and if you're meet the mins then some random number generator spits out who gets interviews and who doesn't -- no merit involved.
Contracting companies: Kind of interesting but in my opinion this is a very narrow window of people who A) qualify to be hired and B) would enjoy/succeed doing this type of work. Bottom line is you need to be typed and have at least 500 hours in type to even be considered. If you qualify to be hired, you are going to need to be single or have a ridiculously understanding family to make the trek to whatever 3rd world country you get contracted out to -- for some it will be an incredible adventure, but I'd hazard most pilots with wives and children would find it difficult at best.
Job fair itself: I am not going to speak much about this portion, this is why you paid your money and I think going to at least one fair would be worth your time/money if you are still waiting for the call. Now for the teaser I posted at the beginning. At about 5:30 PM a United pilot came to the room of people still waiting to pass a warning. Apparently some people with low seniority numbers kept standing in the United line so they could see multiple recruiters. This had the effect of making all us folks with higher seniority numbers wait longer for our turn, and it kept all the United recruiters around for a lot longer. He very specifically stated it would not look good for any prospective interviewees to have resumes in multiple recruiter folders. So, to those people who tried to game the system -- you are gonna get what you deserved. For those who think this might be a good idea, I'm sure it will be added to the pre-scolding that will be administered at future FAPA events...