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!