BAT600,
you really have not understood anything what is going here, have you?
Being an LTC myself, I have seen the new DEC coming in.
First of all, I am 100% sure many of them have lied regarding their previous experience.
Second of all, even when looking at their experience I have been surprised many times that QR hired them as DEC!
Its a known fact by now that the recruitment team has been making huge mistakes in the past, only focussing only on DEC and forgetting all the rest!
Now it seems that they have cjanged policy. Recently large batches of FOs have been filtering through, all of them with lots of experience even in a left seat. They have been hired as FO A330! I evenmet a check airman B727, who has been hired as FO A330.
Without wanting to generalise I would like to see that in the last two years we have been hiring DECs who are not at their place in the left seat at QR. They are weak, have no backbone nor knowledge, they are NO Captains!
Once more BAT600, maybe you re one of the good ones, in which case you should not feel offended. If you are one of the weaker ones, I can understand your reaction.
But I surely understand the reaction of some of the senior FOs here. They feel bypassed, they truly feel they are babysitting during many of their flights without being given a fair chance!
And one more thing....
Hiring a DEC is 50% less expensive than training an in house FO to become captain.
Firstly: When hiring a DEC you only pay the TR
Secondly: With a DEC, some other company took a certain responsibility allready so QR does nottake any risk!
3Rd: There is a chronic shortage of experienced FOs on the market. A company as QR does find 2X more DEC than FOs willing to join!
So Yes, they do want to keep the FOs in the seats and hire DECs, because on the longer run it is less expensive this way than to have flights departing with two captains for years in a row!
