Dear colleagues,
here is my point of view regarding one of your questions:
1) DLR in Hamburg
2)Simulator for basic IFR and CRM
3)FQ in Hamburg
4)Final interview in Hamburg
5)Medical in Frankfurt
1-5 are the requirements to be hired as a first officer. The famous DLR test will be modified. Until now, some of it is done in German, so I suspect that the modification will basically be a translation of the German questions.
If you want to become a Lufthansa captain, there is another requirement: You are only allowed to take part in the training to become a commander, if you have an experience of at least 3,000h with an airline operating in accordance with all Lufthansa standards.
That does not mean that you are not able to become a commander if you have some thousands hours of experience with another airline. Nevertheless, research has shown, that a common culture among pilots is one of many important items to establish a safe operation. A culture is something which cannot be learned from a book, especially if you are used to fly in a different environment. A culture has to be established. This can be done, if new pilots have to spend some thousand hours with experienced captains who already live that kind of culture in the cockpit. That's why Lufthansa will use captains from its mainline until the LHI first officers have a "Lufthansa - experience" of at least 3,000h and are ready to become captains.
Once again, I'd like to emphasize, that there are a lot of experienced Italian pilots who are excellent captains. All have their individual way how to do the job - and I do not talk about any procedure violations. There are just hundred ways to operate an aircraft according to the book. If you like to have a certain degree of homogeneity among pilots, it is much easier to teach and form relatively young and inexperienced pilots than it is to make experienced captains change their way of making decisions.
Me and most of my colleagues treat foreign colleagues with respect and we all believe in their skills (unfortunately there are a handful of exceptions, who I personally consider to be arrogant idiots), nevertheless the concept I've just tried to describe has worked well for Lufthansa in the past and we pilots do not want to see it changed. Personally, I like the idea of having a common seniority list, which gives all Lufthansa pilots (LHI, LCAG & DLH) the chance to apply for all positions the company has to offer. Unfortunately, this proposal was rejected by our managers.
I know that there are other professional airlines like Emirates, who have hired pilots with various backgrounds and these airlines also conduct safe flights. There are hundred ways how to run an airline and Lufthansa Italia will apply the standards, Lufthansa has used for decades.
I hope that there will be a regular exchange between DLH and LHI pilots. It's just the beginning of something new within a well established legacy carrier. Maybe we will be united in the future.
Auguro a tutti Voi tanto successo!
Streetcar driver