Originally Posted by
krismiler
Unfortunately, with the number of pilots employed and the number being let go, the human touch probably wasn't possible. Reviewing the files of around 4000 flight crew, even if only 10 minutes was spent on each one would take around 660 hours or 16 weeks at 8 hours per day. Obviously this would be reduced if more people were involved, but you would want to have relatively senior people making the assesssments.
Having the IT department write up a short program to trawl through the records and fish up specific markers such as warning letters or excessive sick leave was likely to have been the quickest option.
Once a company gets above a certain size, putting faces to names becomes impossible and you are just a number. In a much smaller company, the Chief Pilot might know each of his crew personally and have his own chop list based on individual performance and merits.
You’re making the assumption that this was only decided a couple of days ago.
EK has been effectively grounded since the end of March. It’s been 10 weeks since then. So having a team of senior people working on a list would certainly have been possible. Given the company has already been reviewing sick leave and training performance for various reasons already, half the task was probably already done. Blind Freddie could see this coming on the horizon and any company with half a brain would have been running planning exercises on various scenarios since this all went downhill.
I’m not going to sit here and defend the way it’s been handled. However we all knew what we signed up for when we got here. I for one was under no illusion that seniority would protect you, the local labour laws are NOT what you have back in most western countries.
We came here to have fun, travel and make some silver. The company in return gets my service for a couple of years. Beyond that, nothing. I think that’s a fair transaction and that appears to be all EK want from us. Besides, show me an expat airline anywhere on the planet that treats its expats the same as locals.
Good luck to all those affected. It’s not over yet, all we have to hold on to is our health and family. After all that’s all that really matters.