Autraliancalu
It takes years of experience AND a degree to be a good psychologist. Even then it is a very grey area. Amateur psychologists have done a lot of damage in the past.
A good TRE is first of all a good captain. Someone who has enough empathy with the way a crew handles the situation, he is NOT a psychologist and far from a psychiatrist.
I have been at various training meetings in EK and more often than not it is a palaver based on distrust in their own crews. The true dynamics are often more an issue of projection than a well evidence-based opinion.
Some FO and Capt are rightfully pissed off and are ventilating their anger on this forum. It is simply impossible to draw any conclusions, based on these posts, as to the capability of these individuals. The word that comes to mind is prejudice
Every cockpit has two seats to be filled. Both require a certain degree of experience. Both pilots need to be able to fly the plane, if needed, as a single pilot in distress.
Some FO's at EK are certainly overqualified for the right seat and are ready to move on. The problem may be just an issue of replacing them. The bottleneck of a company that is expanding quickly might just be to find enough FO’s.
Finding FO’s with enough experience for the long haul is looking for people that are close to command already.
An airline like EK that has a bad reputation as an employer will have to fix:
1. It’s reliability with regard to signed agreements.
2. Create a training environment that puts emphasis on investing in training rather than checking.
3. Use psychologists to screen the cognitive capabilities of the pilots when hiring them. Following this, the upgrade failure rate should be less than 5%. If this was not done during recruitment you will run into problems. Not only during upgrade but also during normal line operations. Every airline that takes recruitment seriously does it in this way. I probably made an overstatement that a degree is necessary but the fact that one should have the capabilities to get one is not.
4. If you have the wrong people in the training department then that will reflect on their decisions and policy advice all the way up the food chain.