Duration of new hire training?
 

I was wondering how long it takes to get through New Hire training at Piedmont. I am looking around for regionals right now and trying to find the one that gets me flying fastest. I have been hearing it takes something like 6 months for training at piedmont, can anyone confirm this?

6 months was the case recently. I would say it is going to drop with the new sim in CLT as well as several new SOE Captains that recently went through training. I was in the December new hire class and some guys are still awaiting SOE while others have just finished SOE. PDT is growing extremely fast and experiencing growing pains but I only see it getting better from here.

Wow that's an insanely long time, thanks for the info

If all you care about is being in the seat of a airplane lots of places who cannot hire will gladly take you. Much more to consider than a training footprint. Or maybe not?

Piedmont is the the middle of trying to double its pilot group while it transitions to a jet fleet. Things like 6 months training delays, and 5-6 month delays between official offer to hire and class date (I was offered a new hire training class date in November and I completed the final interview this month), are the byproduct of an airline suffering from its own success.

Long term Piedmont may be one of the better choices in regionals, and is probably worth applying to, however it may not be the quickest to get you through training at the moment (they cancelled their August class to reduce the pool of folks waiting to start by reducing the # of folks entering it) while they go through their growing pains.

Another consideration is that this delay is for the Jet. The Dash is still offered to anyone who qualifies as a "street captain."

Took me 7 months and 9 days.. It's slowly getting better but still has delays.

I was in the Feb. indoc class. Halfway through sims at the moment. I should be flying somewhere in July.

Training times have been decreasing since I've been here.

Yes, there's a delay in training. However, the delay will drop now that the new sim is running in CLT. Additionally, there's a large group of LCA in the works that will greatly speed up SOE. Therefore, a new hire today most likely won't see the delays of the past.

Even if the training footprint held at 6 months, consider the following:

36 Piedmont pilots will have flowed to American Airlines
You will be sitting at home collecting full base pay
You'll have full AA flight benefits
You'll be closer to 2nd year pay

The only downside is if you're hoping for a quick upgrade. The currently flying first officers will have 400-600 more hours closer to upgrade.

and you will on the line while on probation, for 6 months less :D:D