Alaska Poolie Info
 

Anyone have any updated info on how large the pool is or how long of a wait for ground school?

Last I heard is its currently at 8 months, but those newly hired have been told over a year wait with about 40 hired in the last month and more interviews continuing next week.

Is this wait typical with the other majors? Why would they keep hiring with a wait list that long?

Because they can afford to. LOTS of guys willingly give up higher paying jobs for the QOL of living in the PacNW. Alaska will always have more applicants than they can handle.

They staff very lean, so a lot of the hiring is driven by the slack times in the schedule when they don't need IPs to fly the line and more sim time is available.

The latest word I heard from one of the CP's is that they working to drain the pool considerably before hiring too many more. A buddy of mine finally got a class date after the new year after interviewing last Spring. They're painfully aware that the longer someone sits in the pool, the more likely they'll go elsewhere. The goal, I'm told, is to offer someone the job along with a class date within about a month or so. We'll see.

The other part of our ability to make people wait is how few pilots we hire anyway.....We are a small airline with very low airframe growth and very low retirement numbers....we can easily afford to lose people from the pool because we dont need them all anyway....They always plan to lose some

Anyone want to post month interviewed and scheduled class month, had heard they were trying to clear the pool out by July

I hope so, that would be excellent.

I heard there were 75 QX'ers in the pool! Over 10% of the whole pilot group.

Really, 75? Last I saw on the Crew Census before they took it down it said 60-something in attrition and I figured that was the total count. Hope you're right!

Almost 6 months in the pool and still no class date...

Hey, it keeps you from looking for "other options"....

maybe it's mission accomplished?