Studi - you are right, the chinese, japanese, hong kong, UAE and Singapore, all have politically motivated cadet-pilot schemes to get people from their own nationalities into airlines, because they have no locally based flying schools or commuter airlines to produce pilots of their own, and the local politicians find it embarrassing to have a national airline that is crewed completely 100% by expats.
The Qantas 'cadet scheme' doesn't count because it isn't a sponsorship at at all but rather a flagrant money maker, whereby the student pays for every penny of their flight training themselves at about twice the going rate of other flying schools.
You're right wheelbarrow I do have a good job with a UK airline. I got there by virtue of several thousand hours of instructing, civilian and military cadets, VFR and IFR air taxi and air ambulance before I even got anywhere near the smallish turboprop I fly now. That is in fact how the system works, in just about all the rest of the world.
I don't mind admitting there is an element of green eye here though, I just feel there is something not right when four different people that I carried out first-solo checks on and trained for PPLs, are now wearing a BA uniform and earning twice what I do. I do find it kind of bizarre.
Anyway this pro-anti cadet thing could go on forever, bottom line is there is no BA cadet scheme and there isn't going to be one for a long time.
Back to the topic at hand which is BA Direct Entry ...
Could one of you wise ones enlighten me as to who is this 'Carmen' you keep referring to and why she is so unpopular?