jimbols6 - if you get through the selection, you may get the opportunity to go to a company for an extra interview (stage 5) and thus be offered sponsorship by a company throughout the course. If this doesn't happen, then you need an airline to sponsor you before you get to the stage in the training where you are ready to go to base training. Since the intermediate stage is roughly six months, then I beleive that this is what mooney was referring to. Out of curiosity mooney (and also for reference) who was your friend finally sponsored by? Was it one of the prescribed companies, or some other airline that need new pilots?
Cheers and HTH,
Caracul