John

You might come off the high horse for a moment. After the FEIA strike of 1962, a lot of those F/Es went ahead got CPLs, came on the Line as F/Os and flew thru their careers. They had an adjusted DOH and were pretty senior at EAL. I flew as a S/O with maybe a dozen of them. Most were pretty good, too. When AA bought Trans Carib, the TCA navigators became pilots at AA, after traing and getting their CPL.

I had a pilot on C-5s who had been a mechanic, loadmaster, engineer and pilot on them. Now at DL.
GF