Sorry to contradict but the facts are actually this:
September 2012:
11 new hire First Officer
12 new hire Captain
October 2012
10 new hire First Officer
17 new hire Captain
November 2012
10 new hire First Officer
27 new hire Captain
December 3rd class shows 8 new hire F.O.s on the A330
Since June 2012 a total of 69 DECs have been hired. DEC classes on the Boeing reported to end in January. Not sure on the Airbus.
For clarification, are you saying that Emirates is no longer hiring DEC's, or that there are not an adequate number of applicants for DEC positions?
Second question: Are Emirates First Officers being upgraded to Emirate Captain positions? Which fleets are short-staffed, and and what is the expected time to Captain upgrade for new hire First Officers?
Emirates can and will hire DECs when they want. This time around, starting in June, they were targeting a number near 100 to cover a perceived gap in qualified first officers. They will always have plenty of applications for DEC because of the low requirements. Pretty much every Easy Jet and RyanAir captain qualifies after a few years as Captain.
Emirates continues to upgrade first officers. It is management's stated preference to upgrade from within.
If any fleet is short staffed it's the Airbus side now. The A380 growth is now quite fast, but they seem to have been ahead of the training demand this time so there are no serious shortages that I have heard of.
Time to upgrade is fleet dependent. On the Boeing it is running 4-5 years and might actually dip below 4 years for some people this year. On the A380 it is closer to 6-7 years with upgrades just now starting to occur. The reason that it is longer is one must have 2500 hours on type to upgrade on the A380 and that takes around 4 years to accumulate. Those pilots would have previously done at least 2 years on the A330/340.
A330 upgrades are probably somewhere around 4-5 years. That one I'm not sure of. The RJ pilots who joined 4-5 years ago need more heavy time to qualify for an upgrade so that is taking them 5 years to get. Many of them are now coming through in the Boeing and it looks like they'll be starting upgrades on the A330 if they haven't already.
TP