The NZ survey is of interest. It has highlighted the aspect that while there is a demand for pilots the airlines and other potential employers want to take on board pilots who have more experience than bare basic. That is the same in Australia. How do you get a job without experience, how do you get experience without a job?
While there are any number of training schools producing commercial pilots two things come to mind. One, is that not all pilots want to become an airline pilot but their training is steering them that way. Two, is that the quality of new commercial pilots is not as good or high as it should be. This is not a case of a tick-in-the-box sign-off experience but gaining real experience that does not leave a new employer having to effectively to re-train a new commercial pilot before he is of any use. That is expensive.
Talking with pilots in the industry it is not uncommon to find any number of NZ training pilots flying commercially in Australia. Indeed I have heard the expression that the day after a Kiwi gets his or her CPL they are on the new airliner bound for Australia to get that first flying job. Does this mean that they are beyond the arms of those who want to recoup the student loans? A loan is not a licence funded by the government but a loan by the tax payers of the country, a loan that the average punter cannot get but is funded by him.
Then there is the standard of the new CPL. Different schools produce CPL holders of very different standards. Some new CPL holders are just great and the stuff that their training school should rightly be proud of. On the other hand there are some new and even employed CPL holders that you have to question as to how they passed the licence test.
Perhaps there should be a similar survey run in Australia regarding training and getting jobs and how many give up with big bills to pay back.