Apparently their philosophy is changing. Same is for companies like Cathay, see their cadet program. If we're going to follow your philosophy to the letter, then let's close all flying schools around the world. We can't train you unless you have experience!
This is the same old rookie whinge of those who have to sit on the bench for a halftime.
What a stupid argument! Logically we need flying schools and integrate the young to give them experience. it all goes with the syllaby and depth of training. If you really believe that at EK there will be a serious adaptation to the lower requirements, and not just a figue leaf additional sim session at most, then you should definitely fail any assessment of a airline pilot!
You guys need a huge reality check.
Tell me, would you hand over your formula1 car to a rookie who just won the cart championship? Would you let him play in midfield on a Premier league crucial match? Would you set him as second single player in the Davis Cup?
Only if you have no alternative, just like EK now. If you could and wanted to play it safe, you would go for some sort of experience and slowly integrate the rookies in lesser heat. You would also know that if not, you'd incur a bigger risk for failure and you know that in the aftermath you would have all the monday morning quarterbacks tearing you apart, and you would have lost your job. All pros involved would warn you beforehand, although they would be cried down as arrogant and feudal arrivistas that would better shut up and accept the wind of change (basically the wind of abysmal greed)
Losing a game is not really tragic, the championship a little more and in F1 there would be casualties. In aviation most probably only the latter.
The connection between lower initial requrements and insufficient training is always made in the aftermath of an accident (BAH), but very quickly forgotten by the greedy owners, the customers who want cheap flights, the bribed regulators and the eager rookies who might have heard of such catastrophies, but it would certainly never happen to them.
The warning of the old and experienced farts to them are just that: farts.
They smell and no one likes them, i know, but they are reality.