Slowdown is normal. There is a need for pilots late in the year due to timeouts and increased holiday flying, but if they don't have in class by early OCT, you're not likely to finish training and be on line for the Dec rush.

On Jan 1st. all the timeouts come back, so they get an instant staffing boost followed by the mid-january slowdown...which lasts until spring break. So they don't really want a bunch of fresh-out-of-training new-hires sitting around on reserve doing nothing.