Company pays for the hotel room the night before and positive space on Spirit round trip. Van picks us up at 7am. The hawthore suites hotel was very nice and a free breakfast was served. Herb Law the Capt. rep for FLL gave a 30 minute power point presentation. We then took an 50 question ATP style written test. Difficult to say the least... AIM and ATP should be good prep. One by one we met with the panel. Consisted of 2 line pilots (both young FO's I think) Herb Law who is a capt. in FLL and ALPA rep, Sandy the HR manager and Paul Olechowski the Chief Pilot. Herb was very straight forward and professional (they all were). The FO's were a little more skeptical of me and asked many questions about my long term goals and past experience. BE HONEST. Apparently, they have a laptop with lie detection software. A few technical questions about WX and regs. Also asked me to brief an approach plate from GUA (guat. city). Surprise,... at the end of the interview, you are asked to step into a room with an MD 82 FTD. Left seat, takeoff, climb with autothrottle on the entire time. vectors for ILS 9L FLL and missed. Radial outbound to hold. Easy... FTD flies great. You do the eval. with the FO's on the panel and they are both very professional. CP Paul says that they want to find people who they can share the cockpit with for 6 hours and a 4 day trip. Still have firm orders for 30 320 series and options for me 320's. Cant wait! good luck.

I mailed a resume and cover letter to the Spirit Airlines headquarters in Miramar, Florida. Denise then called to set up an interview in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. The interview was located at a hotel where the out of town Spirit crews layover. I showed up early to the interview and presented all of the requested paperwork and my logbooks to Denise and I was presented with a written test. The test was approximately 30 questions. Ten questions fill in the blank and 20 questions True-False or Yes-No. I was not very well prepared for the test and I felt it was pretty hard. It covered FAR 135 and 121 regulations and a lot of the AIM. Examples: What does transponder code 7777 mean? What are the recency requirements for FAR 135 and 121? What do flashing red light gun signals in the air mean? And on the ground?

It started with a phone call from Denise, offering an interview time and date. She said that the whole process should last between 45 minutes to an hour. A few days later I got a letter from Denise confirming the time, date, location and what items to bring (logbook, certificates, medical, passport, FCC Restricted Radio License).

The interview was held at 10000 Wayne rd, just a couple of miles West of DTW. It was an older, kind of rundown building, which is also the place that their training is held.

After arriving, and walking up the stairs, I found the three of them lounging around in the hallway. Denise walked me over to a table located further down the hall and handed me an application along with all of the PRIA paperwork.

After filling this out she took me into a room that looked like an old storage room to meet with Jack and Rob. They asked me for my resume and started out with basic info.....have you ever been convicted of a felony, had a ticket or accident on your driving record, had a DUI, had an incident or accident in an aircraft, failed a check ride, been fired from an employer, been asked to leave a job. After that came a few basic questions about the aircraft that I currently fly. Then a few questions such as....when do you go missed during a precision approach, a non precision approach. On a non precision approach, what does the "V" mean? If there is no "V" depicted how can you calculate one? "What is your procedures for a V1 cut?" I knew the answers to all of the questions that they gave me and had no prior problems with anything related to my pilot records or driving record. After the Technical questions they said...fill us in on yourself from the time you were in highschool til now. After this they asked if I had any questions. I had three or four which they gave very vague answers to. "I have been told that Atlantic City was your Junior base and that it could take 3-6 months to get to the base I wanted, does this sound about right?" They would say "well we don't really have a crystal ball so it is hard to say". "Does Spirit plan on maintaining a pilot base at DTW?" There answer: as of now we do but you never know, things could change. "What is Spirit's plan over the next 5-10 years" answer: Well right now we are getting a few more MD-80's, but as far as anything else goes, you never know. After that, I felt that any further questions of them would be pointless, so that was the end of the interview. They said that I would either get a call (good news) or a letter (not so good news). That was it.

The entire interview process took about 15 minutes and the paperwork portion took approx 20-25 minutes. There was no written test of any kind, although I have been told that there used to be a 50 question test. Jack and Rob were nice enough but when I left the interview I had serious doubts about working for Spirit based on the whole process. I have a good job at a top notch Regional and I decided to stay where I am instead of going to Spirit. Many of my friends are freight pilots and for them I believe that Spirit is definetly an improvement. If I was still flying freight I would go to Spirit tomorrow. I think that you should look at Spirit for what they are....a low cost carrier. And that is definetly reflected in the way that they run their recruitment. Spirit may end up having a great future like Southwest or they could end up like Value Jet. All I am trying to say is, make sure you take a good look at any company that you may work for.

On a final note, I will say, that everyone that I have talked who works for Spirit is happy and I have also talked to many people who have flown on Spirit and they say that they were treated very well by the people at Spirit.