Do they actually have enough pilots in the system that guys can use accrued vacation time or are staffing levels kept at bare minimums?

Yes, and they try and keep staffing levels at a point where you shouldn't be denied a time off request. Although, it does happen. Happened to me a handful of times, and don't plan on getting time off between Thanksgiving and Christmas (Except for the weekends of course). There are a lot of responses and threads on this topic. I know this thread is a bit large, but the search button is your friend here.

Are you open to living in central Nebraska? There's a few internal openings there right now. If no one takes them internally, good chance there will be a couple BE99 direct hires.

Completely depends on the base. HWD I would say no.

They look at performance in the interview, performance on the sim check, performance in ground school, performance in aircraft specific training. There are unquestionably folks with less than 50 MEL who made it, but they were sharp to begin with, and really took the training seriously. The company's more than 40 years of experience at hiring pilots suggests that folks with more than 50 MEL are more likely to succeed, give the company an opportunity to recover the money spent on training and wind up with a good employee and a competent pilot.

Every aviation enterprise, including Ameriflight, has a spectrum of pilots as regards flying skills and proficiency, knowledge, judgement, personality, etc., etc. A major challenge in the hiring department is identifying the cream of the crop in those areas. That said, three years at Ameriflight has turned out some good, well-rounded pilots who successfully moved on to the bigger equipment. Some didn't.

Maybe this has been asked in the previous 79 pages but is this job commutable?

Not in the absolute least bit.

Its possible but hard. It all depends on the base and schedule. I used to commute home every weekend for a day or two max. Basically you need to live and work near where Southwest flys. There are times however where you will not make it home for weeks or longer.

I wouldn't call that commuting. It certainly isn't commuting like you can working for the airlines. You will have to have somewhere to stay near base as you have crew apartments for your layover, but nothing for when you are off work.