I had a chat about the permanent contract issue with a balpa rep I flew with last week, and he said that basically the pool of flexicrew pilots ezy now has flying for them are viewed (by ezy, not by their colleagues) as contract pilots and therefore a further stage of selection is required to offer permanent employment. I think that is completely unfair as many of these guys have been flying with us for a few summers now and if they weren't up to the task they would have been binned a while ago. The balpa rep also told me there are some cadets the company does not want to employ for reasons of personality/performance and therefore this seems like a way of picking who they do want to keep.
It should be a fair and transparent process to offer permanent positions, ie date of joining but of course this is easyjet, and I afraid when you do get here from a ctc scheme you will find out it isn't always as rosy as all those videos they show you at selection/during training suggest it is.