Disclaimer: I am strongly interested in Spirit not for a base or potential "quick" upgrade, but because I truly believe in their business model and culture, truly excited. However, I'd be lying if those two facets didn't factor into my decision at least partly. Would someone be as kind to provide their insight or best guess to my questions.

1) How soon for a new hire to hold DFW or ORD, and any chance of a line within a year (fully realizing the fluid nature of base seniority)?
2) Any truth to the IAH base rumor?
3) My flight case is about dead, EFB's soon?
4) If hired by 1Q 2015, upgrade still under five years?

Thanks in advance, and first beer on me (on second year pay).

 

1. Within a month or two. Both Ord and Dfw are relatively junior.
2. Short answer is anything is possible.
3. Last I heard on EFBs is we should have them by q115 but they have been saying they are coming for at least 2 years.
4.upgrade should still remain under 5 years however you need to realize unless we announce another aircraft order (very possible) anyone hired on now will be a junior Captain for their entire career. We have a ton of young Captains so when the music stops it will stop for a long time.
We currently have 147 airplanes on order with around 1050 on the seniority list already. Depending on the staffing formula they use (I would guess somewhere around 16 pilots per airplane) we will have around 2300-2400 total pilots by 2021. Assuming no attrition and no additional growth we will hire our last Captain in 2015.

 

Baldanza has said recently that our growth/future is more than just our current A/C orders......

 

Keep making money and for sure this is true.

 

Don't worry about a check ride failure. Can happen to anyone. Unless things have changed the interview is more about " Can I sit next to you for 8 hours"
I am sure you will be fine... any issues, just ask

 

FailureS? How many?

 

I'm on my third airline hearing something like this. Still haven't seen an EFB.

 

2 in 8 years of 121. I know it is more than I would like to have. But I have passed a couple of training events since the last one. I passed initial training at my airline no problem.

I just hope they can see that I am more than just that, and I offer many other things as a pilot. I have a lot of pluses on my resume that maybe can help counter balance the minuses. I am bilingual and have employment history in safety departments and a couple of other pluses.

 

In recurrent earlier in the month we were told March for the EFB's, the carrot continues to dangle. We also got the no comment on merging with F9, but probably not since they have older airplanes.

 

I was actually asked that by the CP at my interview. I told him I have 2 failures. Like everyone says, be honest and own up to your mistakes. They hired me over a CKA super pilot that went on bragging about how great he was and how he's never failed a check ride.