I forgot to ask when they actually start paying you i.e join date or FLC.
They started paying me a full salary from day 1.
I doubt we'll see the need for DE commands at flybe for a very long time. About two thirds of the dash FO's and nearly all of the Jet FO's have the required hours for (q400) command. Joining flybe now and you'll be joining at the bottom of this very long queue for upgrade.
However, the company are currently ramping up training for command upgrades. The problem is that this training stops short of sending the FO's off to the SIM for LHS checks and training. There are about 20'ish guys in this position at the moment. The reasoning is that if there is a max exodus of skippers (like the birmingham 28), then these guys are 3-4 weeks away from being released to the line as Captains. Of course these psuedo-skippers are still on FO pay.
Flybe's recruitment model works simply as Captains leave - replace with expensive (year 4-5) FO - replace expensive FO with cheap cadet FO. Which, works out cheaper as you have replaced one expensive captain with a cheap year 1 captain, and also replaced an expensive FO with a year 0 FO.
This will continue until some link in the chain is broken.