expedite_climb - 7 months is a VERY long time in aviation. Last July, virtually everyone got PFOs, even experienced airline folk- for example a mate of mine, ex fast-jet RAF and an IRE/TRE on the Fokker 100 got one. Since then, we have expanded quite a bit and so the need for more crews. Also, and please don't be offended, if you had the hours and all the required ticks in boxes, it may have beens something else in your application that was responsible... however I would say the most likely explanation is the first one I gave!
Vicious Squirrel- happy to email you details, however you didn't give an email address so I can't. I do vaguely remember you asking a while back, but unfortunately the HDD with my mail on got corrupted during an install of Windows ME a while back. I am slowly recovering data from it. Send me your email and I'll send the info on.
Heavy Landing - no, but I will ask.
DeltaT - we had eight candidates for six positions. As far as I know, we were pretty sure about all of them, particularly the Cabair folk as obviously Cabair have a good idea of who can do what. However, if three or four had not met the standard, we would have grabbed the next three on the list and checked them- and kept doing so until an acceptable standard was achieved. The cost of training people that eventually get chopped is too high to NOT do this.