I was there and I have to say that was not a waste of time in my perception. He accepted confrontation on different opinion, he was quiete aware of all the policy regarding fleet transfer and new joiners requirements.He accepted suggestion and he put some ideas. He took some commitments with us and time will tell. I personally disagree with some of his opinion but I have to recognize that he his trying to establish a direct contact with us.
He invite us again to write to him.
Some years ago I attended an EK Training Captains workshop to do with grading.
In the course of the day we were shown a number of videos of crew managing abnormal events and told to grade them from 1 to 5, 1 being very bad and 5 being very good.
One of the videos was of a simulated rejected take off (the Captain in the film was GN now with EY). It was not managed well and 7 of the 8 TREs present graded it 1 or 2, but one TRE from North Africa graded it 5.
Which just goes to show how several people in a room can perceive what is going on very differently.