Food for thought
Could the problem be something like this. Last year DFO decides he will put all those prima donna training types in their place by cutting their training pay by up to 50%, no discussion entered into, take it or leave it. Consequently some senior training staff chose to leave, and very few line captains were interested in applying for training, due to poor compensation and complete lack of respect by management of the role a training captain performs.
Result. 330 fleet becomes short of training captains, Airbus training manager on phone soliciting applications from any line driver he can con. (The boeing fleet would have been short also, except the change coincided with a slow down in aircraft deliveries)
Due to shortage of training captains, the company is unable to crew arriving aircraft. DFO tries to cover his blunder by implementing policy of short courses only on 330 (boeing guys bypassed) this results in going way down the list to find guys who are eligible for accelerated command. Unfortunately, in desperation, some corners are cut, and some of the accelerated guys are not able to make the grade (not surprisingly, given the state of the training department).
Now we have a situation where we have run out of 3 year guys, too many upgrade failures from accelerated command guys (despite plenty of qualified 777 F/O's who are not allowed to have a crack at command on the 330) and commercial ordering 6 or 8 new aircraft that weren't previously in the plan.
So what was previously a shortage of training captains on the airbus fleet, is now a critical shortage. The only way out is to employ direct entry captains.
This is not to mention the 12 or so airbus F/O's who upgraded on the 777 (and bypassed some 777 F/O's) only to be told less than 12 months later that they had to go back to the 330 because it would save the company money. More likely it will save somebody's a*se.
I would like to add that none of this is privileged information, it just seems to me that this whole debacle can be largely traced back to the company's decision to cut the package for training captains.
So it could therefor be argued that either somebody has made a massive planning error, or it was a deliberate ploy to employ DE captains.
There are no surprises here for me, I have seen it all before. But let it serve as a warning to all those who are looking toward the desert. When the company says that they reserve the right to do whatever they want, they can and will do it if the need arises.
Cop U Later
The Rev