There is no intention to hire any externals for the foreseeable future. Including those interviewed and waiting. Link pilots will fill vacancies as they come up.
The traditional access to AirNZ jet jobs has basically stopped. It is from the regionals now. Another massive expansion will probably see some externals hired again (at a worse ratio than now) but those at exec level believe link pilots can mostly fill these roles and they are willing to take that risk.
Any external coming into jet will be a below every link captain on the list so add another 10 years to their progression. Whether this is appealing depends on the individual and their career aspirations, where they have come from and ego. Airforce guys will probably stop applying too.
What started as, and still, is a regional manpower issue has changed the jet recruitment forever. For all the rhetoric from Link pilots about being one company, their management viewed them as separate and deliberately undermined the jet recruitment hiring boards to retain their pilots. Couple this with unprecedented expansion in Jet and Mt Cook together provided the perfect storm of need for external pilots. And the explicit instruction to recruit Jetstar pilots to fill the 320 expansion further exasperated the despair of Link guys and gals.
Let’s be clear, the company don’t really care about the pilots career progression, they care about filling the seats to keep the business profitable. It has been very convenient for them to get on the bandwagon of regional pilots and the perceived unfairness of hiring, when they created it and drove it! And now hiring into the jet fleet has now become an expectation by regional pilots.
The junior link pilots will still leave and the senior link pilots sold them a lemon. This current process has benefited some those senior pilots who probably shouldn’t be on a jet and disadvantaged those that should.