I was at the training center recently and talked to a few of the new hires in the break room, and it seems a lot of them are holding onto the false hope that they will be a captain in less than a year. Most that I talked to had some sort of previous 121/135 time flying something high performance and plan on upgrading out of seniority.

I tried my best to arm them with facts and explain that there are literally 600 pilots ahead of them planning on doing that exact same thing, and that a huge chunk of them are hitting captain mins right now, as in TODAY.

The company is trying hard to bait people in right now with all of the soft pay handed out to new hires, better hotels during training (no more sleep inn), etc... The company does a good job with the promo videos of employees talking about how much they love it here (which is possible for some) with clips FAs running around on the beach in Socal on an overnight, which does happen on occasion but it does not at all paint a very accurate picture of what life is like here. Most are going to be severely disappointed when the koolaid wears off and they wake up in an old La Quinta that smells like @ss, with kids running down the hall screaming, all while they shake heads in disbelief at how desolate their bank account looks on third year FO pay.