The ‘bond’ was essentially a form of tax avoidance wherein part of the course fee was paid back to the cadet tax free. However it also came with a salary reduction the value of which was equal to the bond repaid.
Interesting that CAE cadets are being held in a hold pool as from my understanding all of the tagged MPL and ATPL easyJet cadets at L3 were let go with no intention of taking them on… I guess with CAE taking over as the sole training provider for eJ it would have become extremely hard to sell a £100k MPL course in the future where the previous cadets had been left with nothing.