El Nino I think if you do a bit of research on my post history you will discover that I am already an airline captain on a perfectly good salary, who has a long history here on PPRUNE of being rather outspoken and indeed hostile, towards people who buy speculative type ratings / work for free.
I do have a certain fascination with Astraeus, in fact I blatantly admit I'd love to work for them, and if guaranteed, paid, permanent jet flying jobs were on offer after the SSTR scheme I'd be standing in the front of the queue. However they have never claimed that is the situation, in fact Hamrah has been at pains on occasion to point out that it's NOT the deal with their scheme, so fair play to them. I do have a couple of friends in the company who tell me it's a happy ship with very high standards generally, I also have a lot of respect for Hamrah specifically in that he's one of the most senior PPRUNErs and indeed one of the most senior and respected pilots in the country, who still has the time and patience to come on this forum repeatedly and explained things to a whole bunch of shrill wannabes (including myself on occasion
) who have been yapping at his heels and making ignorant statements about the SSTR program.
Question for scroggs and 747 D though, at what point does someone not need to fly with line trainers / TRI/TRE's, surely that has all come to an end after 50 hours or thereabouts? ... at which point the SSTR candidate is just as economically viable as any other type rated pilot? In fact more so, because you still will have to do an OPC and an abbreviated version of line training with an already-type-rated new joiner.
I can understand not wanting to keep an individual around if that person has only 300 hours total, and it's people with quick command upgrade potential that are needed. But even an experienced type-rated new joiner will still need a season with the company before they can be upgraded to the LHS? In which case, I still can't see that if you've got someone with a reasonable amount of total time, that it makes economic sense to send them away on completion of SSTR, only to advertise elsewhere for your type rated pilots?