DECs have happened before in EK, and they’ll happen again. I think few would disagree that the vast majority of the current crop are a cut well above many of the earlier lot.
Most of the last lot are long gone, some of them with a little encouragement from the very people who employed them. (Who could forget the one who shared a first name with a famous German general who also lived for a while in a desert?) A “Mustang” pilot if ever there was one.
Were the EK FOs unhappy campers when the last lot arrived? You betcha. (And did management care?) See
here for the FOs reactions at the time, and those bemoaning the alleged lack of experience in some of the current DECs, take a look towards the end of the story Look for
For it is written that many… …will cometh … from the tribe of Parker bin Pehn.”
What strikes me most about the story is that it could have been written last week.