Don,
Thanks for the updates. I've often found your posts to be some of the most reliable and informative on the boards. One thing that troubles me though, a few posts back you seem to give the impression the hold pool is for people who didn't score high enough to be brought straight through, either for hours, non-relevant ratings and the like. My assessment group had fourteen passes, and thirteen of those are treading water. The one exception was a gent with some currency issues creeping up on him.
This kind of pattern seems to suggest that the pool isn't being used a place for the "almost, but not quite there" crowd, but rather as the name suggest a place to keep successful applicants until a space opens up for them to join. Maybe we should call it "the stack" and start issuing expected approach times?
In times gone by maybe the pool was used as a kind of reserve tank incase people dropped out of courses or took other jobs, such that EK could dip in take people to shore up the numbers when necessary. But for now it really looks to me like they are trying to hold on to some candidates that they have no other place to keep. Your thoughts on that, since you seem to be much more in touch with the inner workings of Emirates than a lot of others?
Also with the departure of the aircraft you mentioned, how do you think the overall fleet size will change this year? I read somewhere that every new plane means 26 new pilots, although I no evidence to back that up. And finally, since the new joiners are coming to replace those moving to a more exalted position in life (left seat, A380, etc) it would be nice to know both when any changes are happening inside EK, and what the lead time for training new pilots is. That way we can try to work backwards to an approximate start date if there is one in the future. Thanks for any info you might have.
AP2