Originally Posted by
OKSUP
How can you be certain these incidents involved the FOs not meeting entry requirements? Do you work at AB? Were you part of the investigations?
Rwy excursions happen for many different reasons than just "pilots hired below published requirements". People make mistakes, all the time, regardless of their hours or previous experience. On the opposite, junior crews with little experience may display above average skills or attitude, even if they do not meet a published requirement.
I conducted my fair share of interviews in my previous career (not aviation related) and yes at times, I asked HR to send job offers to candidates who did not meet all the point of the job description. Not because they bribed me or because I knew the cousin or their godmother, but just because they showed a personality that would fit the team and make their onboarding a lot smoother and faster. A skill can be learned much faster than changing an attitude or a personality trait.
Bottom line is, hiring below a requirement that you publish on a job description is:
1) legal
2) doesn't necessarily mean there is nepotism or bribery. I'd even say these are extrem assumptions but ok...
3) as a hiring manager, you would be dumb to reject someone who displays a great attitude, just because they don't meet 100% of your published requirements. I'm of course not saying that you should disregard completely the requirements, they are here for a reason, which is to filter and give a direction to the applications you receive. But seeing the world as black or white, solely based on job requirements, would be dumb
You didn’t quote me but I am the OP.
Happy to have in this topic a Czech guy ( you posted that you live and work in Prague) who works for airbaltic as your location is Riga.
Instead of general assumptions you can tell us how they called at the first place the Czech group of pilots who didn’t meet the entry requirements. I don’t have first hand knowledge but there are a lot of posts about it in airbaltic thread and it was one of the reasons to open this thread. You can give useful info as all this fuzz was about you guys.
Regarding your post
1.It’s true AB has quite a lot of pilot related incidents. Since are pilot related there must be something in selection or training or both.
2. At least what I found on google, AB lately had more than 300 pilot candidate’s interviews , why to bother invite the ones who didn’t meet the entry requirements? To waste time and money? They had a ton of CVs I guess, what is reasonable is to pick the ones who meet the requirements. You say they “showed personality” How is that, via the piles of CVs? According the posts at ab thread a whole group of Czechs who didn’t meet the requirements passed, isn’t suspicious?
Regarding the legality, as far as I know, ab is a state company, Latvian tax payers fund it, and no monkey business should happen.
In my last days in the Air Force was interviewing pilot candidates, if I was not following the rules I would be court martialed cause I was working for the state. Laws are varies from country to country but braking regulations in public sector can lead you to serious legal trouble. Anyway I don’t know the exact status of ab.
Of course all these are theories, you can give us a more comprehensive answer. And saying “showed personality” isn’t convincing at least when you apply for a job in a different country supposedly you don’t know the hiring team in person