ECAM Surprise - I hope you are right that we are only going to offering 'permanent' jobs. You have to think, however, what our current flexicrew are going to think if a whole lot of new pilots come straight in on permanent conditions (which I hope they do), but they still have to remain flexicrew. At this juncture I am not convinced that the pilots we will be taking are going to be employed directly by easyJet for the first two years, although I stand to be corrected. A significant proportion of our current flexicrew guys are pilots with many thousands of hours on the Airbus, so they are not just 155 hour cadets. I may stand to be corrected but as I understand it these will be on flexicrew (or whatever name they give it) terms. Regarding the probationary period, I tend to agree that 2 years is too long, but that is effectively what it is. I would have to say that the airline industry is not the same as other FTSE 100 companies and that effectively every 6 months you have a 'title defence' in the simulator anyway.
Finally, people here are saying they would not apply here without the necessary assurances. That is of course one point of view, but I can tell you that easyJet are literally being swamped by applications already from pilots willing to do anything to come and work for us. Therefore easyJet have no concerns about not picking up the right people - they are anticipating literally thousands of applications from fully qualified (i.e. Frozen ATPL, Current IR, 1500 hrs+, 500 multi-crew etc) pilots who want to come here. So if you do not like what you see, that is absolutely fine, but there are many who disagree with you.