Black Stain,
So an experienced First Officer is safer than a DEC? Quantify that one will you? To make that statement is a load of uninformed rubish. Yeah, he might know some local rules and how to figure out flight time limitations, but I will take a DEC from a worldwide airline with 15000 hours and his experience over a 4000 f/o that has memorized chapter 10. And probably those 4000 hours at EK has been in 8 hour blocks, not 2 hour blocks. Experience trumps memorizing the books any day.
And any news if you guys are going to let others fly your 747-8s on order?
IXNAT