PFT generally stood for “Pay for Training” which was widespread rather than “Pay for Time” which was less so.

Pay for training required the job applicant to pay the airline for their initial training. After the checkride you started getting paid, all $17/hour or so

pay for time was buying 250 or 500 or 1000 hours of right seat time. There were ads in the back of flying magazine, you can get everything from beech 99 to 737. In this situation you were paying to be a required crewmember.