easyJet Pilot Recruitment 2012

[Alexander de Meerkat]

REMAX11 - I am not sure you have a wholly realistic view of what is achievable at easyJet. In my view it is a great job, but it does not offer all the benefits or protections of a national carrier. Among low cost companies, however, it is substantially better than any of the others to work for. The training standards are excellent and you fly well-maintained brand-new Airbuses around the place. The Rostering is pretty good and looks likely to get better. You will fly 900 hours a year, and that is hard work in anyone's book. The 'incremental pay' consists of a 5% of basic salary, payable each year after 2 years' service, rising to 10% after 5 years and 15% after 10 years.

The African Dude was right that no seniority exists as such - however, it effectively does for command selection. There are aspects of our command selection that are far from perfect. What gets you on the Command List is a 'CPI Date' - the date you get an interview with your pilot manager. That is dependent on when they can physically see you - normally that is only a couple of weeks' wait maximum. In the meantime, however, 4 other pilots can have seen their pilot managers at one of our 17 other bases and you have just lost those place in the queue. To be eligible to get on the Command List in the first place, you need 3,000 factored hours and must have had at least 2 acceptable sim rides in succession. You then approach your pilot manager to say you are ready to start the process and are allocated 3 training days with a Training Captain called 'Command Assessment Flights'. The wait for those flights can be many months due to Training Captain availability. Assuming they go ok, you are rostered a Command Assessment Simulator and associated interview. If you are going to fail the process, this is where you are likely to come unstuck. The sim is done over 4 hours with 2 candidates and consists of raw data flying, engine failures and a LOFT scenario. At the end, each candidate gets a 45-minute oral quiz/interview on anything that takes the TRE's fancy! It is pretty exhaustive, but once you are through it and have had your CPI interview, you go onto the Command List and wait your turn for a course in order of your place on the list. Once you get a Command Course (and passit, which is by no means guaranteed) you then have to go where the command slots are - usually Gatwick. As you might imagine, it can be a long wait to return to your home base (years in some cases), so you need to be aware of the way the system works. The transfer list, although transparent, is very contentious and there may be some changes to the system in the coming days.

Why tell everyone this? The whole reason for us recruiting high-houred FOs with Airbus experience is because we can see a time when we will run out of suitable command candidates with the correct experience. As I have tried to show, the command selection process at easyJet is rigorous, and inevitably there are failures. There is no certainty you will get the base you want initially as an FO, and if you do, you may have to wait a long time to return there once you are promoted. Also, command requirements can change very quickly. At the moment we can predict a big requirement for captains, but that may change if there is a big economic downturn. Coming to any new company is clearly a risk, and coming to easyJet is no exception. There are no absolute guarantees of anything, and all those on the outside looking in need to be aware of that. I genuinely believe easyJet is a top company, but it is not perfect and is unlikely to become so. We have a very good CEO, a real desire to engage with the pilots in a way that never previously happened here and as bright a future as any airline ever can. Offsetting that, our major shareholder Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannu (is that how you spell it?) is currently engaged in a tacky and damaging public confrontation with our Board, the prime purpose of which is the ending of our fleet expansion. If he succeeds, we may have a fraction of the number of commands we are currently planning for.

The essence of my long post is this - be sure you know what you are applying for, and make sure you have correctly assessed the risks versus the benefits. Here endeth the lesson.