The current shortage of pilots is a major problem, no doubt about it. The worst affected are the 3rd tier airlines, who lose pilots to the first and second tiers, and then struggle to find suitable pilots.
But even worsely affected are the training schools, who desperately try and hang on to their instructors, but are largely fighting a losing battle. We now have a situation where, if you want to become a humble (but most valuable) aero club instructor, you have to do the CPL course first and then do an instructors rating on top. Costs plenty and takes a long time.
You can imagine, that after going through all that training, you are tempted to forgoe the aero club experience and go straight into the right hand seat of a Q400, or at least some sort of commercial operation.
Professional flight schools are now having to pay a lot more for their instructors, yet are still very short of them. the result is that the system just isn't working efficiently.
But let's assume that this all settles down, there still remains the problem of the bigger and more glamourous airlines taking pilots off the smaller airlines. I know it has always happened, but now that the cost of training to a Frozen ATPL/IR has gone up so much, and there aren't many ex Air force guys available, the smaller airlines - and maybe some larger airlines, too - are having real trouble getting enough pilots.
I don't agree with Wiley who said that Hamble was a bad idea. I think the opposite; I think it was an excellent idea, and it is a great pity that BA have abandoned this method of recruiting pilots. (Mind you, I accept that BA don't have 748s, ATPs, etc any more, and I think they would have to farm out pilots for two or three years to a smaller airline - rather like Premiership football clubs loan out their young players to Championship clubs.)
BA can afford to train up pilots. So can Virgin, T'Fly, Monarch etc. If they want pilots for the future, they should do their bit to get pilots trained, not just wait for pilots to come to them.
OK, knowing Ppruners, many will argue the finer points, and I accept that I have not made a full case, but I do think the fundamental, and developing, problem is with the training schools and the (soon) crippling cost of training up commercial pilots.