A couple of points regarding DEC's, experience and the military.
First of all, in
today's market there should be absolutely no need for any DEC's. Upgrading has come to a virtual standstill (if compared with the situation of two years ago) and expansion has severely been scaled back. There should be enough experienced FO's to make the cut to the left seat.
Now this
emotional military debate. As some of you might have guessed, I'm generally no big fan of big government or civil servants. Contrary (!) to Binsleepen, I had
no choice to do my conscript military service many years ago and what I saw was a very bureaucratic, wasteful organization, which is unlike a commercial company,
totally dependent (leeching off...) the taxpayers. Now I
do admit that every nation needs to have some kind of military (I'm no naive pacifist) and it needs to get financed through the taxpayers, but my point is that
nobody should think that he/she is entitled to a job in the civil world just because he/she has spent any time in the military. This is typical behaviour of civil servants (from paper clip counters to soldiers) who are used to follow order and in return have their whole existence financed by a government with deep pockets and think that everybody
owes them everything.
There are a lot of excellent and dedicated pilots in this world with a wealth of experience, doing very brave things under very difficult circumstances, from bush flying in Africa, to flying turbo props @ 15-20000' through bad weather/icing and still others who have accumulated thousands of flying hours and excellent experience in the RHS of an low-cost 737/A319. On top of that there are probably lot's of unemployed 737/A320 family drivers in the holding pool who would love to get a job, or some very talented cadets. And yes, there are also excellent military pilots looking for a job. What are we gonna do? Entitle all of them to a job? Are they also
owed a job? It simply doesn't work that way I'm afraid.
All of the above probably deserve a shot at a LHS of a 737/A319, or at least a chance of a job interview for a RHS, so what really p!sses me off is some arrogant prat who things that; A) he/she is better that everyone else just because they have flown in the military, B) thinks that they can jump the queue and C) doesn't give a hoot about ruining T&C's in the process, as long as he gets a job and a type rating. Then there are even some that have the nerve of dragging the whole Iraq/Afghanistan conflict (with all it's resultant deaths and destruction) and patriotism into the debate...
