Flypuppy - I was bonded, the TRSS just makes you get a loan which you pay off with a totally 'extra' £1,000 a month in your pay check. You leave the bank chases you - I can't get excited about the difference. I suppose it is worse that getting chopped in training will end up costing you. But so few do that its not a bid deal in reality. I bemoan the growth of self funded type ratings in general - as you well know.
Studi - indeed lets wait and see if BA do bring back a fully sponsored cadet scheme. 2 years of training an assessment - yeah whatever. A load of school instructors with a vested interest in seeing you pass the course monitored by a changing handful of airline pilots not really wanting to chop anybody. I've seen many airline cadet courses and taught some to fly. They were under a heck of a lot less pressure than the self sponsored guys with no job and an angry looking bank manager.
I'm not envious of airline cadets - some are my best friends and I used to make my living out of them. But they did distort the market.
1) Selection was often poor.
2) They perverted the natural order of progression to a large jet via turboprop, GA or other means.
3) They increased the risk and lessened the prospects of self sponsored pilots.
4) Their eligibility criteria of age, qualification and background were inherently racist, sexist and ageist without good cause.
5) It created some pilots who drifted into the job, had no appreciation of how difficult it is for most to get there and no sympathy at all for those who didn't quite or who ended up in 'lesser' flying jobs.
Naturally the great majority of sponsored folk were great people who went on to make excellent pilots and integrated wonderfully into their airlines demographics.
But the same can be true in the future without the presence of a fully sponsored cadet scheme as we have known it. A fact which I believe and am enthusiastic about.
Cheers
WWW