So do you honestly think that PFEs could possibly just be "qualified" to be a cruise pilot?
Seems to me that if a PFE wanted to protect his job he would go out and get a rating (which I am sure many of them did - many at Atlas certainly did) and then actually fly an airplane - not a pen - to get the 1000 or 1500 hours required for an ATP. I wonder how many PFEs, high on the seniority list, simply sat back and waited, putting their faith in a scope clause that no arbitrator in the land would honor if there were no airplanes for the PFEs to fly.
Even to fly as a cruise captain (assuming the insurance companies and the FAA would buy off on the program) you need a commercial license as well as an instrument and multiengine rating. Did the PFEs that were not rated expect the company to pay for that also?
Most rated pilots either gave up their lives for 12 years to get military training or they paid tens of thousands of dollars for the training and then gave up their lives to crappy little commuters or air taxi flying to gain the experience needed to get a job at Polar or Atlas.
Granted the PFEs gained their FE experience through much the same amount of hard knocks - but now they expect to lateral over to a much different path with no experience or training? Flying a multi million dollar asset through thunderstorms, CAT, with company managers watching fuel burns to the teaspoon, and crappy HF comms with foreign controllers who are at best garbled and stupid?
Seems like a chance for another "San Bruno Mountain" and that guy was a rated pilot.