Regardless of all the mental arithmetic in this thread, none of us can really predict the future. That being said I agree the recent 4 year upgrades are an anomaly rather than the new normal!
Average resignations have been 250-300 the last two years so that is more like 6-7% a year. Also worth mentioning is they hired 700 pilots back in 2011 (from what I’ve been told). Over the next 18 months all those guys are going to start hitting 7 years or 2 years in command. Given a lot of people seem to leave about 7-9 years I would guess resignations may actually increase.
The loss of 777 airframes in 2019 will have less of an effect than feared because they already had most of them parked at various times throughout this year. So EK aren’t really using the full fleet anyway.
When the 787 and 777X arrives won’t they have to transfer a number of crew over to those fleets to start training etc? So for a while they will need extra crew until they establish sufficient numbers to keep everything running smoothly.
In my experience (from asking people working here) we loose a few f/o’s before upgrade, a lot of captains around 7-9 years and then there’s the 15+ veterans that don’t want to go home. Personally out of the 9 guys I joined with it’s highly likely only 7 of us will still be here by the time our shot at upgrade comes around.
Given all this upgrades should got back to the 5-6 mark on the 777. But 8-10 years for an upgrade? I don’t think so. You have to ask, who would wait that long in the sand pit when you could do it back in your own country?! I know personally I won’t wait that long, I’ll be gone before then.