EK is not a legacy airline which allows low experienced FOs to sit in the right seat for 10-15 years and gain experience that way.
Where is that the case these days? Unless the airline is stagnant, that is simply not the case any longer! We want to think that this is the normal progression but the reality is that the PFT generation of 10 to 15 years ago are now the trainers at many airlines around the world, these are individuals that learned to fly in full glass aircrafts and at 350 hours sat on the right seat of a fully automated airliner and after 4 or 5 years are now on the left! What kind of experience do they have to teach?
Right now you have 5,000 total time captains flying wide bodies with 350 hour F/O's in many airlines around the world, so if that is your parameter not to fly on an airline, you are limited to airlines that are stagnant because not even at the majors in the US is like that anymore, How many TP pilots get hired at United or Delta every month?
The experience levels in the left seat are plummeting, so who are the next generation of even less experienced FOs going to learn from? The turbo prop driver?
Quite frankly, I'll take a TP driver as a trainer than a PFT wonder boy anyday!
prerequisite should at least be some sort of previous widebody, maybe international type ops of a similar nature.
Is that the case at any of the ACMI operators? Or mainline US carriers? You can't possibly tell me that you can call the training you get at Delta or United as "Comprehensive"
I know many pilots that their first international experience (outside of Mexico or Canada) have been on the right seat of a 767 after 6 weeks of training including OJT...
We might make an argument that maybe this is not ideal a d I tend to agree, but EK is far from being unique on that end.