How does it defeat the purpose, simply because Alliance won’t know how many suitably qualified applicants (ie. Type Rated) they will have to choose from until after May 4th, close of applications, Those that are type rated would not have applied early, they would not be currently living in Adelaide and for one solitary route 4 times a day for the next 3 years would want to know what the offer of employment is, at or before the time of interview.
The F50 is a marvelous aircraft, even by today’s standards, it is however no longer in production and that makes it a dinosaur. One would need to have serious motive as a long term Rex Adelaide based 340 Captain to make that move. The terms and conditions would need to be significantly better to compensate against the possibility of not being either adelaide based and or flying a redundant aircraft type after just 3 years.
So if these “large number of Rex Pilots have already been interviewed” the question still remains, “What is Alliance offering for these positions” the interviewed ones at least would have to know, if indeed they have been.