Because you will never know…. The snapshot of upgrade times at time of joining has little bearing of what your upgrade time will be. At any given time the economic conditions in some part of the world could produce an unending supply of highly experienced DEC applicants potentially delaying your upgrade for years. Equally likely some operational incident will precipitate a kneejerk change of requirements for command arbitrary adding a decades wait for people that were less than a year away from the command course. Now with all of that I will yet again invite you to reread what Outlaw wrote several years ago because it applies equally today! Best of luck!

as a local said once:“you are not here for the money, or the joy and pleasure, you are here to be part of the history“

How long is a piece of string?

Around 6-7 years based on a DOJ around 2018.

if you joined today perhaps plan on 10 years worst case scenario…

What about the accelerated command avenue? False promise to lure potential FO’s??

Always is….. it was also nice in the past when DEC candidates would resign their previous jobs then move their families to Dubai only to find out the DEC course requirements had changed and they were now joining as a First Officer or not joining at all!

Can someone share the trainers black list?

I will try and put things into perspective. In the space of three years, we have gone from mass redundancies, to now having insufficient FOs with experience to promote on the 380. In turn, this has led to the pending arrival of DECs.

If that doesn’t indicate how futile it is to predict time to command, I don’t know what would.

the question s why is it that they don’t have enough FO qualified with experience - and the answer is very simple - most of them have not been called back to rejoin.

Average has been 4 years on both fleets for as long as I can remember

Right after the FO's hired 8 years ago.

If you're experienced then apply for DEC and get ahead of the FOs. They'll love to fly with you.

You might not need to worry about that possibility. Chances are high, somewhere during your training they will fail you (either because of your lack of CRM, or for not answering a question "sufficiently" that was thrown at you during the approach at 5000 ft after a 13-hour flight). They will then call you to the office, kindly offering you to either return home, or re-start your training in the right hand seat. Your choice!