Upon further investigation I understand that people paying up front for the SF340 rating will now be the norm - apparently a precedent was set by Swedish applicant(s) who had gone to Flightsafety for the sim and offered themselves to Loganair with just the circuits and lpc/opc to complete, thereby saving the company money. I will say that the current employees who know about this are not at all impressed with the way recruitment is going at the company...
MVE - point taken, but if your loan is at 6% and the company pays you back at RBS base rate + 2% then it doesn't take much arithmetic nouse to work out that you're making money each month (just enough for a pint and a pie but better than a kick up the arse).