This simply happened because in house FOs were not bidding for the job, that's all.
Rubbish! DEC recruitment took place because the company had no means to train the volume of captains required to start the low cost operation. Britannia pilots were not offered the opportunity to bid for commands on the new operation until late in the process and even then only limited numbers could be sent to Hapag-Lloyd to get their command training. There was an intial reluctance to move to Thomsonfly from Britannia once it started operations because there was a wide variance in terms and conditions, once BALPA negotiated the Thomsonfly pilots back onto the Britannia contracts and a free bid was offered there was rush to join, so much so that again the company could not cope with the training requirements so more DECs were needed.