Diamond Dog,
It is fair to say that Ryanair was the leading recruiter of OAT grads last year, but not fair to say the majority went there. 57 of 253 is 22%, but not a majority.
There are only a few on the list that pay for Type Ratings, BA, BMI and FlyBe are the only ones I know for sure do, except for the OAT cadet schemes. The same goes for FTE as far as I can tell.
You rightly point out the lower salary at FlyBe. The same goes for BA, but the very good flight pay makes up for it.
A main difficulty, with Ryanair is the low pay during line training (others being contractor vs. employee and perceived poor T&Cs). I've had difficulty nailing the figures down, so I am interested in whether you can share them. What is the pay before the line check? I hear it goes to £32K after, plus sector pay. What do years 2-5 look like? I assume the numbers get pretty good at some point or fewer OAT grads would be going there. Is that a safe assumption or do they just go to get the 900 hours a year so they can unfreeze and move on?