Farty Flaps – Yes absolutely spot on. I kicked off with a start-up airline at one time and then stayed with them for almost ten years before I tired of the corporatist bull!!!!! culture that had slowly evolved from the heady, buccaneering first two years. I vividly remember that the majority of my (captain) founder member colleagues, whilst very nice guys, hardly possessed startling management or leadership qualities and were strictly average but adequate line pilots (just like me!). What a remarkable number did possess in spades, however (I didn’t), was a desire to wear a suit, sit in an office and be the big man, using the training route as the industry standard stepping stone (I was offered the same but declined). Once ensconced, following, in a couple of cases, less than luminous training interludes, these pleasant and unremarkable men, prone to the normal human error and limitation, transmogrified into unbending and unforgiving paragons of knowledge, rectitude and Olympian certainty, to the puzzlement and consternation of their founder-member friends plus the newly joined members of a rapidly expanding airline. New devices progressively evolved for the selection and training of recruits and ever higher standards (which the founder members would never in a million years have themselves been able to attain) became the bar to clear before acceptance.
Whilst all this was going on, I was aware of similar founding days of Emirates and of a number of the personalities who now seem (from an outsider’s view) to have reached such similar Olympian heights as the personalities described above and, furthermore, seem to uncannily mirror their attitudes and methodology.
In the “old days” of both airlines, it appeared that experience, track record and personality were the three key elements, established during an interview with the DFO/CP, plus the results of a discrete couple of ‘phone calls around the industry, following which, if all was assessed as well, the candidate would be offered a position. Nowhere did I see any sign of HR “experts” or psychology gurus being required to tell the DFO/CP what they needed to know about particular pilot candidates and at all times I was aware that the system seemed to work most effectively (except when the “Old Pal’s Act” was invoked periodically and the odd duffer slipped through) in that able and experience people continually joined both airlines.
All of which, in fact, leads up to my asking the question: Is the EK three day selection process (and other airlines’ similar procedures) really required at all, or is it just a fashion accessory which the well dressed DFO can’t do without and in particular is it really needed for the DE captains to be recruited, who’s track records, personalities and experience must, by now, be transparent to even the most casual observer?