This policy change may have some logical merits but I believe will be unsustainable for the following reasons.
1. This is not a career airline in the sense that nobody joined this company as a second officer with an accepted promotion path i.e. narrowbody FO - widebody FO - narrow CP - wide CP. Most of the DEFO joined with considerable experience and many of whom gave up the opportunity for narrow body command at their previous company to benefit from the chance of quicker wide-body command at EY along with salary benefits etc etc. These guys are going to be incredibly annoyed and will result in more people resigning and therefore a bigger recruitment headache.
2. I believe EY will struggle to recruit purely for the 320. People come to middle east normally as the position is a step up from what they are currently doing. Offering 320 only is not appealing enough and given that they can walk into EK and QR onto a widebody I think the choice is obvious, plus the fact that if you joined EY now command is about 6 years, EY is holding little to make it look attractive.
3. From next year for the next 3 years we are receiving about 12 x 777. In theory a 777 FO who is eligible for command will have to transfer to 320 for 6 months then do upgrade. So thats a full 320 transition course and then a command course later. Then we will have to replace that 777 FO with either an internal transfer from airbus fleet (again a full transition) or hire DEFO which according to post above is not the case as all recruitment is on 320. On top of all this for each new aircraft that arrives you have to transfer about 10 crews from airbus to boeing (all full transition course) and then CCQ 10 crews from 320 to 330 and also recruit guys onto 320 at the bottom to cover all this movement. That is a LOT of training!
I think putting the emirati SO onto the 340 as cruise pilots for a year or 2 is actually a good idea but I don't see how that should affect many other things.
The 320 seems to be heading for a true low-cost company now and I think all the recent changes are just an indication that the current management has clearly lost sight of what the airline is about and where its going. At least EK and QR have a clear strategy and are following it through.
There are going to be a lot of new opportunities coming up in the next few years and I don't think its going to be long at all before EY is having a major problem to both retain and recruit pilots unless the money goes up substantially. They may have slowed deliveries slightly but the fact remains we still have about almost 20 aircraft arriving over the next 3.5 years, majority of which is widebody and if they insist on recruiting only onto 320 and everything else supplied through internal transfers, I think it will turn into an impossible training and recruiting nightmare!