Originally Posted by
pfvspnf
Well the first batch is perhaps lucky, there won't be a ton of upgrades I can assure you ! Put out an advertisement and you'll get hundreds of qualified people , far far simpler than an uograde program!
Actually that was the mentality of the company 3 years back. for 2 years they stopped upgrades and hired nearly 80 + left seaters from outside...infact even gave type rating to some. Many of them have left and sadly few were asked to leave after certain 'incidents'. At the same time the high time FOs (4000+hrs) realized they were not needed anymore in ABY and more than 50+ left to the neighboring carriers.
It did not help ABY when EK and EY reduced their minimum qualification time to 2500 jet hours .....so more FOs qualified into these carriers as well.
Mgmt woke up and realized this and started putting in a concrete upgrade program. The minimum qualification for upgrade in ABY is 4500 hrs in company but they started identifying suitable candidates above 3500 hrs and put them in a queue.
So yes the upgrade carrot is now dangling in front of these FOs...and yet some still are leaving. How many will eventually upgrade...that is for time to tell.
Infact 2 of my friends(320 Capts in other carriers) have offer letters from ABY for the past 9 months now but have not been given joining dates...i really don't think they will be called. Even they have given up hopes of joining. (and there goes my employee referral bonus as well
) so looks like they prefer internal upgrades now.
All said and done....yeah i see alpha cadets still waiting for months between their sim and line training begins. Recently went for a base training flight with 3 cadets and had time to finish only for 1 guy, the remaining two could not fly and later got to know they had to do their SIM check again as it had expired
