Jerez hasn't been owned by BAE for nearly a year now!
When Britannia sponsored their 6 cadets earlier this year they found the quality of the applicants to be so good they would have liked to have selected an additional 6. But funding was not available. They therefore offered to categorize the additional six as "Britannia approved". This meant two things:
If, when they graduated from Jerez, Britannia/Thomsonfly had vacancies they would be first in the queue.
Also, being tagged "Britannia approved" made it much easier for the six concerned to raise the finance for the course as they could show lenders that their job prospects at the end were better that the majority of self-funders.
So all that has happened this time is that the scheme has been made public and advertised. Okay it may seem a bit like a con but if you read all the info available it states very clearly what the situation is.
This is basically identical to the CTC scheme. With CTC the student is required to raise £60,000 and is liable for this loan. CTC do NOT guarantee a job at the end of the course. If no job is available the student still has to pay off the loan. Therefore the two schemes seem virtually identical and a lot of people seem to have accepted the CTC arrangement as a "good thing".