While hour building for 150 hrs in a 152 won't get you ready for a 737 sim check, it will make you stand on your own two feet and will force YOU to question yourself and make sure what you are doing is safe.
....
Spongy Brakes surely gets to the heart of the issue being flagged up here.
This is as much about the character building side of airmanship rather than solely about aircraft handling skills.
Moreover as an FI you have to be able to explain the hows an whys of what you do IN ADDITION to being able to demonstrate the process to (what is hopefully at the very least) a reasonable standard - otherwise you will simply not survive as an instructor.
You will surely become much more conscious of exactly what you are doing and why you are doing it when you are expected to explain to a curious student actions that you might otherwise perform relatively unconsciously after even the best of initial pilot training?
I think these debates often assume the guise of slagging match with each camp trying to paint its grass as the greenest because of an unspoken "jealousy" of the advantages to be gained on the other side.
I for one freely admit that I wish I had the time and money as a younger man to at least
have the option of undertaking a full-time "CAP509" course (as they were called in the olden days), and perhaps even a network of contacts to land me the dream commercial job of my choice thereafter.
Well tough-sh*t I didn't, and I'm not going to get all bitter and twisted about those that did by saying that me and all my self improver mates are all better pilots.
When I think of some of the daft things I have done in aeroplanes in the past, especially at around 100-300hrs, it is hardly fair to single out guys who are trained for an airline environment for cock-ups in a relatively unfamiliar GA environment with not a lot of hours under their belt in order to justify the path of my own life-story.
I'm sure that many of them will persevere with GA to become as good as many self improvers and some even better than most. Moreover they are in all probability likely to perform better, at least at the initial stages, in a Multi Crew environment due to their comparitive lack of culture-shock.
However, I shall come off the fence at this point by GUESSING that the self-improver MIGHT have a slight comparitive advantage,
all other things remaining equal, at the later stage of selection for command due to his early ingrained habits of self-reliance during hour building, instructing or whatever, in the world of GA.
So what is lost on the swings, might well be gained on the roundabouts (...although some of us have probably spent far too much time farting about on the swings for this to be of any help!)
Even if this is true, because
all other things are never really
equal in such circumstances, it is not necessarily very significant.
For example, I learnt all about the pitfalls of the "machismo complex" and developed decision-making skills in often quite dangerous circumstances as a motorcycle courier in my early twenties, and took those lessons with me to the world of aviation. Likewise it would be foolish to assume that the integrated training discussed here somehow discourages or even robs its graduates of their ability to excercise such
transferrable skills.
The other guy up for command might be an accomplished solo yachtsman, or mountaineer, whose ability in the cockpit is scarecely likely to be diminished by the fact that he was the product of an integrated course eight years ago.
Us, and them....
....and after all we're only, ordinary men - Roger Waters