Originally Posted by
The Dominican
I just cannot see how EK can sustain that growth without hiring DEC's, I know it is not a popular view and I have heard all the horror stories about how much training they had to give to the DEC's back when they did it, yadda, yadda (although these guys are flying the line there now, so I don't think it was as bad as some might want you to think, I think a lot of it is Internet chatter and exaggeration) but I simply cannot see how they can do it, for what I understand the pool of current F/O's that have the experience to upgrade is getting thin as it is now, Is this just more Internet chatter or is this correct?
The current DSVP of Flight Operations does not want to hire DECs if he can help it. If they do go down that road it's only a temporary fix and it will lead to an even greater problem, namely the inability to recruit enough first officers. They've gotten away with it before, but I think it would be much more difficult to sell today. The F.O.s would be livid and many that are looking at EK as a quick(ish) upgrade would leave.
Not internet chatter and not exaggeration, there were a number of failures from the DECs that were hired previously. That then entailed extra training to get them up to speed. Some never made it so a lot of time was spent and then those people were let go. Some squeaked threw only to have some pretty major incidents on the line. That is a major risk to the business and the higher ups do not want to re-visit it.
Granted many, if not most, did okay and then became good line pilots but the percentage risk in hiring DECs is still deemed to be quite high.
The pool of F.O.s is just fine. It's the company's abitrary requirements that makes the pool of "qualified" upgrade candidates low. The first thing that will happen if there is a squeeze is for those arbitrary numbers to come down so that more F.O.s are deemed to be qualified.
Typhoonpilot