Vanpilot, well said mate. What kind of clown, having forked out 30+k for initial training then forks out 20k for a potentially useless tr and is then willing to not only work for free, but even PAY an airline to work for them? Do these people live in the real world? THEY ARE MUGS, PURE AND SIMPLE. It is only because airline pilot is perceived to be such a "dream job" that these dreamers, who probably have no real concept of the day to day mundanity of the job, are willing to do this.
Imangine the headlines, "Macdonalds workers, so desperate they are even willing to pay for their own "big mac rating"". Absurd of course, so why should aviation be any different? Its only a fooking job! A job is by defnition meant to make you money, not cause you to spend it.
It is idiots like these that ruin the whole pilot recruitment game for the rest of us. So you think that with 200 hrs youre entitled to jump from a 4 seater twin to a 200 seat 737? Like a fresh uni graduate should be running a company in their first job?
Wannabe pilots, if theyre really serious and actually enjoy flying, should have no bones about working their way up through the industry, ie instructor, to perhaps air taxi, to perhaps turbo prop, to jet.
I know of, and am sure that there are many more pilots out there who have reached the "big time" through hard work and perserverence, with minimum cash expenditure, and have really earnt the right to be where they are.
Then you get idiots who, with their big pot of cash try to leapfrog the whole process. These are perhaps the same kind of fools that are prepared to pay the likes of OAT an additional 30grand for their intial training, principally for the perceived promise of better job prospects.
In my mind, anyone who feels the need to try to increase their job prospects through the speculative spending of obscene amounts of money, lacks character, deserves no respect and should be at the BOTTOM of the pile when it comes to recruitment.
As long as such loosers exist, the airlines will continue to take the piss out of wannabe pilots and the recruitment game will continue to be the absolute shambles that it is.