Silver Tongued Cavalier
Good Post with a lot of good points. I think that the history of the problem goes back further with a different cause, one which seems to have been forgotten with the passage of time.
A year or so ago, EK was heading into its most ambitious expansion phase to date, and TCK ushered this period in by comprehensively alienating all Training Captains, Line Check Captains and Recruitment staff by changing their pay structure for the worse.
I believe that this was when the rot set in. I may stand corrected on this, as I am not part of the airbus training department, but my information is that from that point on, applications for TC's dried up (evidenced by the airbus training manager phoning captains to try and talk them into joining training, not to mention the recent threat to Boeing captains). This in turn led to stress on the airbus training capability.
The first sign of this was when airbus upgrades went to short courses only (I assume that this was to minimise the amount of TC's needed). That was the period when airbus F/O's transferred to the Boeing fleet for an upgrade, but the same opportunity was not available to Boeing F/O's. The next sign came when they ran out of elligible accelerated command candidates and needed to take some of the new Boeing captains (who were previously airbus F/O's) and send them back to the airbus for a short course(mostly against their will).
Once those two sources ran dry the only alternative was to bring in DEC's.
So I do agree that the latest cause to the problem is the unplanned aquisition of extra aircraft, but the start of the problem goes back much further, and is further testimony to the beligerence and arrogance of our management.
The biggest obstacle to a solution, as you have said, is loss of face. There are now too many people with a finger in the pie, therefore they can all place the blame on someone else.
This really has turned into quite a mess.
You said "so increase resources to the recruitment/training department".
Great in principle, but lets look at paying the current guys what they are worth. At present these guys work in excess of 12 hour days, five days a week, sometimes up to three weeks a month. For this they get the standard 3.5 hours per day, plus the insultingly small 1.2%, (which works out at a bit over half an hour of overtime for a junior captain). On top of that of course they are now recruiting pilots who will get paid more than they do.
Until this company starts to realistically value the contributions of its staff, and reward them accordingly, there is no possibility of an improvement in conditions, or the constantly deteriorating level of good will shown by the workforce.
Cop U Later
The Rev