Our first pilot New Hire class in over 19 months was welcomed to Flt Ops on 10 NOV. The class was made up of seven pilots internal to FedEx, who were previously working at Corporate Aviation, Flight Training and Flight Management. We have an additional 14 internal applicants, who have successfully completed the testing and interview process and are in queue for future classes. We have received approval to hire 200 pilots next year. The successful internal applicants will be the next pilots hired, following that, we will begin to hire from the street.
Our plan is to place all new hires into the B757 FO crew position. We do not have firm dates for our future classes as we await the results of the current posting and the subsequent training letter. Once those are completed, we will be able to identify 57 FO training slots for our future new hire pilots and plan our next classes.