A346Driver
You wrote:
“Forgive me but I fail to see the argument behind command directly on a widebody when the airline now has a narrow body fleet. The natural course of progression is F/O widebody, Command narrow body then promotion to Command widebody. Its how its been done for years all over the world and for a good reason.”
You fail to see because you don’t want to see or you haven’t got the ability to see. Airlines who operate only wide bodies like Emirates, Singapore, Cathay, Virgin Atlantic etc give wide body Command as a natural progress. Others do it more or less as per the natural course of progression that you descript but this is not what we do. What we do is that we upgrade our FOs on the A320 and at same time we are getting more DECs on the wide bodies. What we do we get direct FOs on the wide bodies while our A320 FOs are waiting for the promised MFF to happen. What we did last summer is that we stopped upgrading because we were to busy training non type rated DECs and DE FOs on wide bodies.
“I know of no DEC's (including myself) who came to EY with the minimum hour requirements. The minimums are there to satisfy insurance requirements but that certainly does not mean that EY employ DEC's with those minimums. My total time is over 15,000 with more than 6000 PIC on A340 and no DEC on my course was below 10,000.”
You must be happy that your hours got you a DEC position with EY. However this is not how it works with Airlines that claim to use Best Practices. By what you say we should get Pilots with thousands of hours to replace all of us. Then we would find one with 15500 hours to replace you and then you can go and jump on top of BA seniority and fly the A380 from the left seat.
“Gentlemen Command is Command, be it on A320, A330 or B777. To be able to get an upgrade withing 3 years is a marvel and something you should not frown upon (and yes I do understand that most F/O's came with heaps of experience to EY, I just dont understand why you dont extend the same courtesy to the guy on your left) . I've been flying 23 years and saw my first jet command 13 years ago. Please do the math.”
Big empty words. Most of EY FOs have been waiting as much as you did. Some they have been FOs for as much as your entire career. Some of them came here because they were promised an early wide body command. These FOs did not start their flying career 3 years ago.
“My intetion is not to show any disrespect to any of my peers but I certainly expect the same treatment. To generalize and say that DEC's have no standards and come from low costs is simply utter rubish. If this is the case I suggest you report each and every case to the safety department. You have valid salary arguments with the airline but knocking your colleagues is not really going to get you anywhere.”
I don’t know to whom you are referring to but if you think that loco airlines like Easyjet, Jetblue and Southwest have no standards then you know nothing about aviation. Easyjet standards in particular are second to no one. I don’t know anyone who left those loco airlines to join EY and I don’t see why they should. Do you?