Mesa saves the money on the interview sim and lets the training department weed out non-hackers. Ground School and the oral are pretty cheap, so they eliminate a few folks there, then when you go to sim training you have to prove your sh*t in the first 3-4 sessions...if you have trouble early on in the sim, you're gone. Mesa training is not easy, it is still part of the interview! I do understand that SKW training is more thorough, but not hard compared to Mesa (this is from folks who have done both recently). But SKW seems to do their weed out during the interview stages, and focus on training new hires.

The PFT types can USUALLY do the sim, because they have 40 hours of practice from school. Doesn't make them skilled or experienced pilots, but they are high-quality trained switch monkeys in that particular cockpit.