I would say No. I think they are concerned with Checkrides in your FEF. Not your grade book. I turned in a copy of my AF Form 942 with my app as proof.

Is Southwest OK with people taking military leave during the first year of probation? I’m sure it’s frowned upon but I’m talking for like 2-3 months.

guy in my class finished IOE then took a leave for a year until he could be off reserve in a base he wanted. So no I dont think they care.

I’m glad you asked that question—I’m a civilian with a few guys retiring MIL soon with similar questions. My question is does it matter what SWA thinks? Is there not a legal protection for military ordered absence?

SWA doesn't care. Had a couple in my class take mil leave the day after indoc.

They don't care.

I was out for three months of probation year for reserve duty. No questions asked. All that happens is your probation gets extended 1 for 1 for anything over 30 days, I believe.

Yes, there is legal protection. The law is called USERRA. So if they were going to retaliate, they can’t directly tie it to taking too much military leave or anything like that. It’s kind of like with whistleblowers. The law protects them. A company can’t directly target a whistleblower for their whistleblowing but...

Don’t know how they treat it currently, but in the past there were (and maybe still are) chief pilots who frowned upon and covertly discouraged taking “too much” military leave. That said, any company has to be very careful if they try to retaliate against guys taking mil leave.

From where I sit anecdotally, SWA appears to have the most lax mil leave stance/scrutiny in practice, of all the a-world dudes I've work/worked with/for. And leading 2nd place (AA) in that specific race by a large margin too, nevermind the rest of the peloton trailing rather far behind by comparison. To pick an analogy for those of us not making big airline money: if SWA was a returns/customer service desk, they'd be the Walmart of returns desks.

If MLOA maxi-flex (an ART pun, very much intended) was my primary angle in (junior) vocational life, SW would be my #1 choice hands down. It's a good airline to be a dual-status kernel/F-teener.

At the beginning of all the covid nonsense, my unit had a lot of missions drop for transporting medical folks up to the NY area to standup the ad hoc Hospitals. We got slammed with requests and ran out of full timer crew availability fast. Our boss started asking for help. I called my chief pilot 3 days before a trip and explained the situation. I hate dropping ML less than 2 weeks out. He cut me off and said “Thanks for what you’re doing, don’t think another thing about it, we’ve got it covered here, be safe and we’ll be here when you’re done with these missions”.

The only correct response from the CP. And I'm a tree hugger.
edit to add: if the mission was bombing some other country to secure our oil supply my answer would be the same, as it's not up to the guys in the cockpit to choose the mission.