2017 was always going to be a year of little or no recruitment. This was known and talked about on here from at least the middle of 2016. Recruitment was predicted to pickup again in 2018 but again, it has been known for quite some time that there are a fair number of FPP pilots at the front of the queue. It is also known that BA’s training department struggled with the requirement before this lull, and so they were highly likely to try to avoid a similar scenario. So recruitment was always unlikely to be of such a high volume as last time around.
I appreciate it is frustrating waiting for your recruitment date to come along, but I personally think these Gatwick slots are the first real opportunity for DEP holdpool recruitment in well over a year. It will not empty the entire pool for sure, but I predict some of you will be getting a call fairly soon after the plan for the slots is finalised. Determining who is needed, when and where, is a complex task because the PRIAM result just released is likely now largely obsolete, and it will have to be rerun internally before the precise nature of extra recruitment can be determined. That cannot happen until they have established what they are doing with the slots, which is determined by where they can source planes etc.. It took several months to get a result last time around, and I suspect getting their ducks in a row in preparation to run it this time will be even more complex. I would expect several months yet, and the actual document will unlikely be made public this time, other than perhaps approximate seniorities for various positions, and maybe numbers of new pilots required. These extra slots were not even a slight possibility a couple of months back. It is bound to take a little time to determine the best course of action.
Will some of you turn the offer down when it comes? Of course you will, because a lot changes in eighteen months.