All of the delays centre around easyjet's lack of training capacity. Back in July, I'm sure CTC, believed that EZY, would snap up their ATP and Cadet pilots as fast as they could train them. With 400+ pilots as EZY's 2007 recruitment target, it's no wonder they believed that. I did! Then came EZY's capacity crisis. Pilots were leaving so fast they were having to charter work out, which hit their profits. Worse still they had lost many line trainers so they couldn't even train enough newcomers to satisfy demand. Along comes a new Managing Director, who kicks butt over the capacity crisis and heads roll. Since then they've recruited more line trainers and made efforts to try and retain pilots for longer. They are still VERY tight on training capacity from what I hear though. The CTC, guys take double the number of line sectors to train, have the longest time to command and in the past have been the hardest to retain. Is it any wonder the new management are concentrating on the SSTR pilots recruited from other airlines? Have EZY fallen out of love with CTC Cadets and ATP'ers? Or is it just a temporary blip? Time will tell.
I reckon that recruitment in the next 2-3 months will come from Monarch, Jet2 and Thomsonfly, all of whom are adding airframes in the very near future. Problem is that all three have been doing a lot of recruitment themselves recently. Between them they could hoover out the hold pool very fast; if they don't though it's bad news all round.
And the issue of favouring Cadets over ATP pilots? CTC have invested serious time and money in their NZ and Bournemouth training facilities. They have to use that capacity to make money out of it and they can't easily turn off the tap of cadets coming out of the system.
On the bright side I'm sure they'll find jobs for everyone in the pool; even after 9/11 they still managed it, so it's just a matter of time.