Panama,
I don't believe anyone was ever 'promised' a command in 3 years.
What was stated at recruitment was that commands happen in order of seniority once you have reached the minimum requirements and commands are currently occuring at the 3 year point. However in the future things may be different.
Now the FOM effectively states that commands will go in order of seniority unless there are no 'qualified' F/Os; then first accelerated and then DEC guys may be used. What happened in the past was that we had DECs coming onto the bus fleet ahead of '3 year' guys. I tripped into that boat and it delayed my command by a few months. Recently we have had guys taken from the Bus to the 777 for command out of seniority with some bull!!!! about MFF used as an excuse.
We do however have a promise that there will be no DECs on the Bus fleet for the foreseeable future from our Rumour Buster site.
Bottom line is that if you are currently a 737 Captain with 8000hrs working for Outer Mongolian you are perceived as a better captaincy candidate by the company than a guy who has been here 2 years 364 days, has 9,000hrs, with 2,000 as a 330 Captain before arriving.
The Captain qual only counts if you had it on arrival and became a DEC. Apparently after you move back to the right seat EK arrange for a lobotomy to remove any previous command experience.
Why let ability get in the way of quals or hours? After all there are no bad pilots that are 20,000hr Captains; are there?
Over to you EK Pilot!