If morale was better and/or training paid better, we would have too many applicants instead of needing to extend guys just to keep the numbers up. I don't know who in management worked it out but it was quite clever of them to only offer pax terms to C+T extendees. The way things were going the 400 would have been almost 100% extendees for C+Ting in another couple of years - brilliant really. Terms and work so bad that only the truly dedicated or desparate take the job!
So it might look like an A scale conspiracy - its not. Its all about the company not being sued for age discrimination - if it wasn't for pesky BPP they would have done this ages ago. Now that the GFC has put fear and uncertainty into the minds of FO/SOs they will get a much higher uptake than they would have say a year ago. Ironically, the GFC and resultant slowdown will actually increase their BPP liability and so FO/SOs that sign over will be foregoing more now than if they had signed a year ago, based on conditions at the time!
Don't watch the hand with the knife(redundancies/SLS), watch the one slipping into your wallet pocket(BPP/B scales for 55+)