Gents
Keep to the point. Angry as you may be, emotional venting will not help, nor portray pilots as any more than the bus drivers they are made out to be.
All points made at the meeting were taken in – whether they come to anything is another story. However some clear messages have been sent.
To get pilots EK will pay whatever the applicant negotiates and be moderated by how much he is needed. There is a free market approach so DEC’s would be well advised not to sell themselves short. This will be the trend from now on and it will happen again. Perhaps in 2 years time these DEC’s will see other DEC’s hired with even better packages. Or perhaps the market will dip, and with it the package.
DEC’s will be the way of the future to some extent as they hugely relieve the training burden and costs. A few basic sim sessions as opposed to F/O’s full conversion to Captain and F/O’s space filled by incomers conversion. This is a big saving.
As always a pilot’s value is being set by hours in the aircraft. Training in simulators, special project time etc does not feature. If the DEC’s did not have the hours they wouldn’t even get the interview whatever their status at their previous outfit.
EK may level the field to some extent by matching their own recent internal commands that have the DEC’s level of experience (from previous airlines) up to the DEC’s rate thereby saying there is no unfairness and everyone is paid by experience level. There’s not that many and it shapes the “new system”
In time this system will roll down to F/O’s. The days of the quick EK command are gone and F/O’s will always run the risk of DEC’s taking their place so less will apply. More money will have to be paid and again this will be paid on experience. F/O’s will see other join at a higher rate.
Low time captains who are in training would be well advised to think hard about keeping up their hours. Sim time never has, and probably never will, get the job or make the hours that are required for “pay for experience”. Get the hours otherwise your salary will always be down and you may miss out on a great job opportunity.
This also will prevent the low experience commands going into training. They’ll focus on the hours then consider training. The higher salaried pilots will make more per training duty so this will be attractive for DEC’s who have the experience and will quickly fill the gaps. Having done plenty of time away from home, training will be desirable.
There will not be an across the board increase in salaries. There never needs to be. Experience will place pilots on a ladder. The top end of this latter will be suitably rewarding for those that have experience. The bottom end will be occupied by those seeking to get that experience. The market at the time will decide what hours count to what placing.
We all know experience does not make a good pilot – that will be sorted out by recruitment processes.
Again EK sets the trend – this is the future of pilot hiring