It's all hearsay and the company will continue to offer rubbish contracts (70%) until they are desperately short of crews. If they are hiring so many for next year then why have the guys/girls who have been working this summer on 70% not been offered anything more permanent? Because that is the future at Jet2 - work your arse off during the summer for 70% salary (6 days on, 2 off) and have 5 months off during the winter. Unless you are semi retired with no mortgage to pay why would you want this kind of deal?!
It looks like the future is to contintue to hire and promote people on part time deals, which means it is not a career, but mearly a stop gap.
As soon as other airlines start hiring then pilots are going to leave in droves and Jet2 are really going to struggle. This is probably why they are trying to build up a pool of people by advertising so early, striking a deal with Oxford and talking of recruiting military pilots. Maybe there are a lot of people already looking at the middle east and management have got worried? Who knows and quite frankly who cares? If you want a part time low paid job then look no further, if you want a career then look a lot, lot further!