I'm sure I wrote a reply on this thread yesterday, but it seems to have disappeared into the ether - and I can't remember what I said. Ho hum - must be my advanced age!
MG there have been many threads in this forum discussing life at airlines wannabes have no chance of joining until later in their careers. They were relevant and remained because the questions were posed by wannabes in the first place - I have no problem with wannabes asking me, for example, what life is like at Virgin Atlantic. That's quite different from a guy with 6000 hours on A320s asking what his chances are at VS; that's a topic for T&E - and, as you will see if you look, I spend a good deal of time in T&E fielding questions about long haul flying in general, and Virgin in particular.
Another example is the BA DEP thread. BA's DEP recruiting isn't yet for ab-initio fATPLs, but it's getting very close, so the thread is relevant and stays.
As for the great Ts&Cs debate for new joiners to the business, it's pretty futile trying to lay the blame at any individual's or group's feet. The fact is that the vast expansion of the locost sector, and its philosophy of stretching every pound to its limit, is driving many of the changes that are particularly affecting wannabes. I doubt there is any action you can take to materially change this; it will have to wait for the market conditions to force change. By that I mean that if demand for pilots exceeds readily available supply, airlines will have to make it more attractive for you to join. What could produce such a situation? A combination of the reduction in Ts&Cs and increase in training costs putting people off from entering training, and a continuing increase in demand for the airlines' products - and thus need for pilots. I think we could get to that situation - I suspect that, once the money generated by the latest property boom has dissipated, there will be far fewer wannabes able to afford the money to go from scratch through to the end of a TR, yet I don't see any levelling off in the demand for flying. You do the maths! We may be a few years from this situation, but it is feasible. Only a change in recruiting policies will avoid a real problem, in my opinion.
As for Ts & Cs higher up the industry, they are generally improving - at least in Europe. My airline alone has seen a huge improvement in pay and benefits in the last 2 years. BA has to some extent gone the other way, but will have to revise its position if it's to attract the pilots it wants. The major charter airlines are also having to bolster their packages, particularly for senior training pilots and, as Rob suggests, the enormous expansion going on in the Middle and Far East will cause a drain elsewhere which will have to be countered - by improvements in Ts & Cs.
Scroggs