No one in current permanent employment will take fixed term, and i'm not being disrespectful to TOM; no one would for ANY airline. HR must know this, they aren't daft; but have probably decided to play a game of 'suck it and see.' If someone does take it and considers the 'possibility' of a permanent contract as a worthy criteria for acceptance then I would have serious concern about how they approach risk assessment. Much like BA, I'd imagine Thomson are retaining numerous positions for low cost cadets and will take this option over any.
I would imagine you'll see the roles advertised with Parc, Storm, Zenon etc imminently. If they had advertised these positions as a mixture of PPY and fixed term it would have saved them the bother and possibly added a little hope for the unemployed baby FO's who would have been more inclined to take fixed term if they were still without work. But they aren't NG rated of course
