Another blow for 3 year AIrbus F/O's
Although it looks like a great effort from management to do something about the 'Airbus F/O upgrade crisis', this new policy stinks!!
Let's see how a typical almost 3 year F/O's situation will be:
Let's say Angelo joined in may 2004 (so that's 2.5 years in EK now to, make it easy). The people who were recruited then, had typical about 6000hrs, most of them had a command, or were very close to obtaining one. These people were told that they shouldn't worry about command in EK, three years would be it, give or take a few months..
Now, Angelo is 2,5 years in EK, has aquired around 7500TT. He is well aware of EK procedures and the route network. Unfortunately, he's an airbus F/O, and because of some fcuk ups in Toulouse and Berlin, the A380 is delayed, and so will Angelo's command course.
EK management, in an effort to calm down the Airbus F/O's, has found a solution. Transition upgrades! Now, Angelo might start a transition course in the second quarter of 2007, so he will be here for more than 3 years already. After the course, Angelo needs to fly 6 months on the B777 before he can start his upgrade. By the time Angelo can do his upgrade, he has +8000TT, and will be in the company for about 4 years (and that is all best case scenarios, e.g. starting in the first available transition course..). Of course, his upgrade will be the standard EK upgrade, where the LOFT exercises are quite difficult and Angelo wouldn't be the first one to fail on this..
In the mean time, Angelo's twin brother, Felipe just stayed at Air Mickey, flying low cost B737's over Italy. They started their career together, and Felipe has about 8500TT as well, been a Captain with Air Mickey for the last three years, and Angelo told him the pizza in Dubai isn't that bad (Round Table), so Felipe wants to join EK. He does his little recruitment thing and is in. Although Felipe never flew a wide body, never left the European skies, thinks that ETOPS is a strange disease and Dhaka the capital of some African country, EK offers him a DEC course on the B777. Oh yeah... Felipe is already a Captain, so he doesn't need to do these anoying LOFT's, just one exercise where we fly into Sanaa for your qualification, and let's call that a LOFT to keep everybody happy...
And then some people tell Angelo NOT to be pissed off??? !@#$!@%^#%
Look, the only solution is to allow upgrades as per seniority!! If the F/O with three years wants to have a transition upgrade, the company can even bond him for another three years if they like.
Then the other cr@p: let's say that this whole thing is a veto from higher up and the guys in Flight Ops are not to blame.. Why only start in about 6 months from now?? Start with the F/O transition straight away and every new F/O that joins can go on the airbus, there's plenty of training resources available on the Airbus sector after the new A380 delay. It would at least save another 6 months for the guys, plus, EK would have enough F/O's to crew the B777's left seats without DEC's in a few months.
So even though this new policy is far from perfect, an IMMEDIATE incorporation would be necessary to keep it acceptable.
Last thing, forget about the Accelerated Guys overtaking their colleagues, it's almost as bad as DEC's...
MR8
Last edited by MR8; 30th Oct 2006 at 10:48.
Reason: typo's (probably still a few left)