Emirates DECs

[Dune]

Jim:

In response to your questions:

"what does it mean about the FAILURE OF DEC candidates? Does this mean on the sim check part? The initial training or what?"

Yes the failures are occurring during the recruitment process.

Emirates has over the years developed a very comprehensive 3 day evaluation process which looks at many facets of an individual (personality, CRM skills, flying ability, decision making, psychological makeup, etc). The process has been proven to work extremely well over time as there are very few who have made it through the system and not subsequently done well at EK.

For the DEC's, they decided to extend the recruitment process to 5 days. The first 3 days are the same process every F/O must go through but the extra days include a LOFT scenario with failures identical to those experienced by F/O's in EK who attend the command upgrade/evaluation process (and in the interest of fairness these scenarios are not done by the recruitment team; they are evaluated by the standards Captains within EK who have no interest/bias/agenda in this process). They are judged the same way every other Captain is judged within EK; the standard is there and they only have to meet it.

The incident in question involves a candidate who failed the process at the 3 day point (specifically the first sim ride; the same one all the F/O's do when they apply to join EK). In the minds of the pilot recruitment team, there was no point in proceeding to the next phase of the evaluation if the individual did not meet the standard required in the first sim ride (this seems like a very reasonable decision to me). This decision was overridden by the management and they insisted this candidate be given the remainder of the evaluation. This was done and the candidate again failed the LOFT. At this point management decided the process might be too arduous for most of the DEC's they have attracted thus far and decided the best way of getting the numbers they deem they require would be to lower the standards expected of DEC's in the selection process.

"Also on the Personnel guy who resigned,why would somebody like that care? If management says to hire XXX, what would a PE guy care?"

As mentioned by others, the individual is a pilot whose position was Pilot Selection Manager. He obviously disagreed with the higher management decisions to lower the bar only for the purpose of putting DEC bums in seats. As such, he has shown himself to be an individual of integrity and my hat goes off to him. Should I ever be given the opportunity to meet him in a bar on the road rest assured I will be buying the beer that night. So seldom do we see this level of integrity within EK; it is a refreshing change and I wish others would step up to the plate and do the same.

"And on the specifics of "lowering" the standards, I thought I saw a few months ago that the standards were fairly high."

As above, the standards set to enter EK are (or have been) quite high. The problem as I see it is that management have painted themselves into a corner by virtue of blindly saying yes to a/c acquisitions without planning on where they were going to get the pilots to fly them. In my opinion the management have gotten so used to pilots falling over themselves to get into this company that a certain level of arrogance has set in whereby they cannot understand why they are now scrambling for bums to fill seats.

Sorry Jim, you had one more question:

"Is EK hiring more than it is losing?"

Really a two sided question.

I do know there have been very few "quality" DEC candidates to present (no disrespect to those who have applied; it is just that the management of this company thought extremely experienced pilots would be falling over themselves to get into EK given our past history of a very content, willing and cooperative pilot workforce). They expected type rated pilots with 15-20 years command experience under they belt to come to EK for the money they were offering; every Captain at this company knew there was no way that was going to happen. What does that tell you about how informed our current management is when dealing with pilot pay and benefits packages??

Have many pilots haveleft yet? I believe the accurate answer is either none or very few (there is a rumour floating around but I will not go there). I suspect the reason is only because there is nothing better to go to (yet?). The worrying thing I feel is not so much that we are going to lose experienced people (because most of us have staked our professional futures on this airline given it's past and future prospects) but we will definately not take in the types of pilots with the experience we will require in future years given management's now well documented history of moving the goal posts in a whim and applying the "where the f##k else do you you think you will go" managment tactics when dealing with it's current workforce.