kernowclown - I think The Flying Cokeman is pretty accurate in his assessment. The option to recruit non-rated pilots was always there due to the possibility of there being insufficient rated pilots applying. I am not at all convinced that Parc have the ability to do the assessments, but that is the party line. There are some slightly conflicting unknowns in this. The first is that past experience shows that a significant number of the external rated candidates may fail the sim ride - if that is the case then the 'just under 200 pilots' may not actually turn out to be that many. Offsetting that, the likely lay-off of 60-70 Thomas Cook pilots, many of whom are Airbus rated, is going to provide us with a large pool of rated pilots free of charge just when we need them. A further unknown in the equation is how many pilots, particularly captains, we are likely to lose to BA once the hold pool empties - that will have an effect on our future recruitment that is as yet undetermined. As you can see, the dust has to settle a bit but on balance I think that the recruitment of non-rated pilots this year is unlikely. The honest truth is that until all these factors play out, no one really knows with absolute certainty the answer to your question.
In the immortal words of former US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, 'There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don't know we don't know.' Priceless.
Last edited by Alexander de Meerkat; 21st Sep 2011 at 13:34.