I'm 95% sure that the next Alaska new hire class will be provided hotels and 80% sure that they'll receive positive space tickets home during training. This is an effort on the company's part to attract as many new pilots to Alaska as possible. The only reason I'm not 100% sure on both is that I haven't seen an official memo addressing it.

Last I heard the next Alaska class is still slated for July, of course, that could have changed.

As of Jan 1, 2017 72 pilots have been hired by Alaska and I believe that they want to hire approximately 150 pilots on the Alaska side in 2017.

I do not know how many have been hired by Virgin America in 2017 so far, but it was confirmed that the Airbus utilization rate has increased which has lead VX to double their 2017 hiring plan. I believe in late 2016 they announced they wanted to hire 56 in 2017, so double that and you have 112 new hires for Virgin America in 2017. (I'm sure a VX pilot can chime in on this figure)

The hiring will continue into 2018 as Alaska is receiving additional 737s and Virgin America brings on 5 more A321NEOs which from what I understand will be evaluated/considered seriously by AS management as they determine a future fleet.