EasyJet Hiring Experienced Pilots anytime soon?
 

Does anyone here happen to know if the Chaps in Orange will be hiring people with experience anytime soon?

I mean hiring on decent T&C's with a decent salary. I'm not interested in & couldn't afford to join via this flexi-crew malarkey.

I have 4000 hrs TT with 2500 hrs Lefthand seat Turbo-prop.

From what I've read on other posts / forums it seems to me that Easy are only interested in this flexicrew business.

Does anyone know any different? ...

Good Day ..... Odd Socks

I have heard that looking forward ( that'll be a first) they are concerned about the experience pool for upgrades and that that will require some DEP, no idea of timescale though, sorry.

In the form of flexi-crew Skippers??? :confused:

Skippers;)

Current command list less than 150 people long, planned commands this winter >100 (and historically the planning has always been short) so it is looking likely that some DEP's could be needed.

Just because the command list is 150 long, surely doesn't mean that there aren't more that meet the requirements and could be assessed.

D and F :8

Deep and Fast, of course you are right. My point was simply to highlight that the list is now very short in a time that the company is still expanding and we have a trickle of leavers.
There will be people joining the list every month, but how many is impossible to say.

I hope they all tell them to poke the flexi-crew contract. What a joke!

Well, eight onto the list at LGW alone this week so I don't imagine that things are getting that desperate yet. Having said that, the last FOs to join on permanent contracts are just reaching the minimum command hour requirements now so it may be more of a pressing concern in 12 - 18 months. Any DECs would be outrageous if there are suitably qualified SFOs within the company. If they tried to take on DECs or contract captains whilst SFOs were waiting for upgrade then there would be an uproar followed swiftly i'm sure by some form of industrial action.

Tall Boy
 

There wont be industrial action over DEC's. There never has been and never will be.

How do you expect the training department to cope with upgrades, new joiners, cadets, command failures, leavers and general expansion?

Your management have put your airline in a position whereby you need DEC's in order to survive next year.

Not good news if you're an FO, but hardly new news. Easy has taken DEC's since the beginning.......why stop now?

Because it would be distinctly unfair on those on the command list, F/Os' who have been in the company in many cases over 6 years, who will be by-passed by people who are new joiners. If easyJet really are serious about retaining crew and offering some sort of career path then DECs' should be a thing of the past. The problem lies in training capacity - increase the size of the training department and more command upgrades can be completed on an annual basis. Yet less than a year ago our flight ops managers were declaring the training department needed to be downsized :ugh:

Probably not, when you consider many ezy captains joined during the DEC hiring boom. However, career progression is an important part of our Balpa CC's mandate and I have no doubt that the threat of a new wave of DECs' , with the command list as long as it is, will meet strong opposition from Balpa and within the pilot ranks. NSF would agree with me!

Dont forget the post Pre-CPI candidates

Two months ago there were 132 awaiting CPI check flights.

So roughly 300 in the 'extended' queue.....

Thats because few of them know what they're doing!

Anybody who uses the words "Easyjet" and "Career Airline" in the same sentence these days needs their head examined.

It's gotten so bad now that a couple of my former colleagues now SFO's have elected to turn down the offered command ... because it was a "seasonal command" i.e. you go back RHS in the winter - another dirty and devious way to screw the flexicrew kids. And of course the same crap with moving to LGW for the command. Any SFO on a base where they have a life especially if it's MAD or MXP would be mad to take them up on their oh-so-generous offer. Ergo - sorry guys we need some "flexicrew DEC's".

Word to the wise - out here in the sandpit we have most of the same things as EZY - incompetent managers, crap rosters, constantly moving command goalposts and a company that treats you with utter contempt. But at least an FO here, takes home a couple grand more than an EZY captain every month. If there's seriously 300 people waiting in the command wings and they're still talking DEC's, some of you guys should seriously think about what you're doing.

If you ever had a command at Easy then you would know that as a F/O in the sandpit you don't take home anywhere near as much. Saying that, the complete package hopefully leaves you with a bit more in the pocket at the end of the month. The rest, I couldn't agree more.

Yeah but it could be a career airline. Thats my point. We weren't all exposed to the flexi-crew financial rape. The guys joining over the last couple of seasons have had a :mad: deal, but that will have to change as even 200hr cadets have been saying up yours and not turning up for their 320 courses having found better offers elsewhere.

Plenty of people have done very well out of ezy and are at a base that suits their life away from work. And the latest pay deal included a new entrant pay scale that *should* do away with flexi-crew. Which was CTC's brainchild as much as easyjet's. It would need more than a big aeroplane and another 2 grand or so a month to tempt me into a life in the desert, horses for courses and all that. DEC recruitment would however not so much change the goalposts, more like blow up the entire stadium.

*subject to the (in)competence of our management.

As always, there is nothing as boring as the truth. For all you sandpit dwellers, I wish you well. Indeed, only this very night I discovered yet another top quality chap leaving us at easyJet to go in search of big jets and warmer climates. I wish him nothing but the best.

For those like myself happy to remain at easyJet for the foreseeable future, it is not all bad. Regarding the issue of DEPs, it seems unlikely we will be taking any soon. The word from above is that our pool of flexicrew pilots is now sufficiently large that we do not need to take more. I am also told, however, that we have just started another batch of CTC cadets (43 in total they tell me) and they will being trained throughout the winter. This does beg the question about what happens to our guys whose contract finishes in October. It would not go down well to see new bods coming in for training whilst other are left out in the cold for the winter. The signs are that most, if not all, of our current pilots will be kept on for the winter and then into next year, but that has still to be officially confirmed. Another interesting statistic for those that like that sort of thing is that we have trained 94 new captains from our own ranks this year (nearly 10% of our entire FOs) and are going to do another 96 for next year. I would humbly suggest that few airlines in Europe, and indeed anywhere else, can offer those sort of promotion opportunities. In addition, a number of those people are likely to leave to the sandpit, thereby creating even more opportunities for those that want to stay here. Regarding DECs, that is inconceivable for the foreseeable/infinite future and the stuff on here suggesting that is a likeliehood any time soon is either malicious speculation or just plain foolish. We have a large number of FOs awaiting commands and another (several hundred in total) who are nibbling at the hours for command should they choose to stay. And finally a word about the temporary commands. EasyJet may not have planned it this way, but most of the guys on that deal have made a fortune out of it. The got the £10k for taking it, avoided the 90% for 6 months that goes with a permanent command and then at the end of it nearly everyone of them got permanent commands after a few months anyway.

So life in the sandpit may be a wonder and delight to many, and I can only wish them well in their new-found utopia. It is a one-way transaction and so it is good they do enjoy it, as they will not be coming back to an airline job in the UK any time soon. For those who choose to stay at easyJet, it is not perfect, but it does suit a lot of people very well indeed. Our highly-publicised summer problems are proving a silver lining for numerous aspiring Captains as many more command opportunities will appear next year than would otherwise have been the case. It is my sincere hope that we will start recruiting 'proper' pilots again soon (not DECs!) rather than only from the ranks of the flexicrew scheme. In the meantiime, I wish all those marooned at FlyBe and the likes every success in their search for better things.

Well an interesting thread and one that i was half thinking of starting myself!!

I too would be very interested in joining Easy, currently an FO with 1500hrs+ on B733 on a contract likely to end on Oct the 30th.....! However only if it was proper recruitment on decent T&C's, full-time, fixed roster........From what NSF says above i won't hold my breath for that anytime soon.

I hope the tides turn but right now i think being a not particularly experienced FO (ie. like me with less than 2000/2500hrs) is becoming more and more worthless in this industry, it is one of extremes where you are either better off being a cadet or SFO approaching command, being sat somewhere in the middle isn't so good right now!!

Fingers crossed though.....:ugh:

Trust me Dan, being an SFO with a bucket load of hours is worthless too, especially with a 733 rating. You need a command with a minimum of 500 hours to even be marking time in this economy.

The airlines (I don't just mean Easy Jet) don't seem inclined to invest much in the industry and it's people at present, which is sort of understandable.

Just to be clear when I said DEP, I did not mean DEC! There is some amongst the spreadsheet and KPI readers who hold a view that to ensure upgrade supply in the future we may, and I stress, may have to diversify our sources into the RHS at EZY. The conversation I was part of took this to mean people with turbo-prop and regional jet time. As to the contracts involved with this ie flexible crew Trss, dep etc etc this conversation was a training one not a commercial one, so any opinion on what terms EZY would offer, if, they go down this path would be guess work, but it would be logical to assume they will start with the worst and see how many bite. That would be consistent with current practice, but we do have a new CEO with rumoured winds of change, emphasis on the word rumoured which sums up the title of this thread nicely.

I know this is a rumour network - but can anyone locate the source as to the 100+ figure for upgrades this year . . . ?