Well, I got through the interview and got an offer. Now - do I take the job?

Wondering if any recent hires can tell me about the class schedule. Do you get weekends off? Is travel home possible/discouraged, etc? How long will it REALLY take to get from the first day of class to OE?

Thanks for your input.

I just finished my second week. You do get weekends off when the training department has their stuff togeather. Oddly enough this weekend we are holding class on sunday. As far as travel home goes, you have to have five consecutive days off and permission from some higher up to get a travel pass because you are not an employee until you pass your checkride. Classes are from 8:00 am to about 4:30 with an hour and a half lunch break. Since I am still in ground school I can't say as to the length of time from start to finish. However; I spoke to a guy who started on July 2 and he said his checkride was scheduled for August 26.

The schedule is 8-5ish Monday-Friday. When you are off (at night, or Saturday and Sunday) you are off, they don't care where you are. They don't, however, provide non-rev travel unless you have at least 5 days off. Those 5 day windows SOMETIMES happen during your CPT/SIM schedule. The first four weeks is ground school (all the written tests are a breeze) followed by the oral exam. The next four weeks (depends on the individual schedule you get with your sim partner) is all cpt/sim. You will have 6 sessions in the GFS (touch screen cockpit layout) followed by 8 sim rides. After that, LOFT, then OE. You will be bounced around duing OE until the date your base award takes place.
The ground school instructors are great guys, but a little frazzled by having to teach a new class every week. Everyone is really nice and trying their best to help you out by providing personalized attention when you need it.

You are not even an employee there for the 10 weeks of training, so NO travel benefits. 4 wks ground school (usually weekends off), 4 wks sim(3days on/4 off) then 2 wks OE. Ground school is of not much value (lunch time is fun). The hotel is probably the worst you will ever stay in during your career (and sharing a room). They have very high turnover with ground instructors (you will end up knowing plenty of info from the _____ they were furlowed from). Brad, the manager of training recently jumped ship too. Extremely high turnover within all departments for some odd reason. Company won't pay Flightsafety for instructors and thus try to do it themselves. Great pilot group but unfortunately struggling under NW. That's great that you are gung-ho for this place but there are better alternatives. The jets look really neat but... Just trying to warn you friend.

Navajo31,

I'm assuming that you're flying a 'ho somewhere, from which airport?

i will clarify a few things in this post since traveljunky was either fired from pinnacle, or he is a disgruntled worker (all of his post are pinnacle bashing and he has contributed nothing to this message board except that). he is correct. you are not an employee till you pass your checkride. ground school is what you make it. i learned a lot during the ground school portion and felt very good about being prepared for my oral exam. ground school isn't hard, but you get out what you put into it. the hotel is the worst you will ever stay at.. nuff said about that. most of the instructors now are line pilots who were bought off. and brad was a furloughed delta guy who was called back, so if returning to your previous job is "jumping ship" then yeah, i guess he did. we are a great pilot group, but far from struggling under nwa. we are struggling because of ourselves, not from outside sources. nwa signed a 10 year contract with us, delta signed a 10 year contract for us, so the business is there. what we need is to stick together as a group and force management to see things our way. i feel very optimistic that this management will see it our way by the end of october.

Once again, traveljunky you don't know what the hell you are talking about. Some of the new hires went to St. Louis for some of their sims with Flightsafety instructors, and came back to Memphis to do their checkride. I would know since I had a new hire in the jumpseat not long ago for his fam ride.

So - did I read that right? No non-reving home on the weekends? Still not a bad deal but why not go home and relax if flights are open.

You can only only non rev when you have 5 days off in the row. Like between ground school and CTP

So basically a newhire is stuck in MEM, sharing a room at what is apparently the worst hotel in the country for at least four weeks? And they get $400/week?

So much for the pilot shortage....