Thank you Dubaigong!
Dio - If you read my post through you will see that I did make an effort to explain that this culture was a small minority.
The top end of the seniority list has some very very highly experienced and respected instructors, examiners and Captains AND FOs. (I know and have flown with a handful who chose quite specifically to not upgrade for rostering/professional reasons)
Some of these guys have been flying Boeing since Pontius was a pilot and I was honoured to have them bring me on and help me on my joirney in aviation both before, during and now even still after my time at FZ.
Also in the mid and bottom tiers of seniority there are good numbers of more than up to the job pilots by any standards. However there remains a significant and growing majority or more and more recent hires who are clearly demonstrative of the bar having been lowered. For the most the new upgrades were on average better than most of the DECs after a certain hiring point BUT and I caveat this was also lkely to exposure and experience to the region being very very important and DECs coming from one area having not flown to the sort of destinations that are FZ every day stops found themselves lacking and sadly sometimes unwilling to listen to FOs who had flown into same destinations for years.
I remember flying with some great FOs who had been passed over due to clearly arbitrary and spurious subjective CRM markers. The fact was as an FO if you had one of the TREs who was nice/fair you were fairly treated. However if you let's say a certain arabic speaking instructor you could be set back a year for upgrade for not doing something the captain should have done.
Before any one shouts were you one of the afflicted? Nope I merely point it out on behalf of at least 4 good friends all of whom became skippers at FZ and funnily enough. One of those has gone to EK, two to China and another back to UK.
All of them went on to bigger and better things very quickly after having been held bakc for a year when they were by all accounts well above the standard!
But hey what would I know. Im not a TRE!