You're the one talking non-sense my dear friend.
You would rather spend 30 hours burning electricity on a SSTR than 150 burning fuel in a MEP? Come on. Which is more likely to earn you a job anyway?
The recognised wisdom is that you have a good chance of getting airline work (here in the UK) with 200 hours
Huh? I thought that you said that the huge recession and credit crunch were going to burn everyone alive and that UK airlines weren't hiring since January??
Get your thoughts together before opposing your own arguments.
I have been following a recruitment process at a given airline very closely and all I can tell you is that the higher the hours, the better were the chances. Given airline would give preference to 500+ houred guys if such guys applied but often they didn't have a choice and recruited the best 200 hour guys from an integrated course.
If I had my own airline, I would not easily trust a B737 or A320 to a 200 hour guy, let alone an RJ. I think that the U.S. has a far better system allowing students to build more hours more easily so allowing them to keep very high recruiting standards. What justifies the JAA rule forbidding P2 time on MEP?
No matter how the student does it, instructing, hour building or air work, students need to acquire the necessary experience. How they do it is their choice and I would not try to influence that choice because I think that they are all very good.
I would love to see more flight schools taking initiatives though, rather than just the usual focussing on the pupil's money.
I'd rather see us competing in challenge against fair training providers who care about their pilots than all the expensive providers that'll loose comptitiveness and start going bankrupt when low-cost flight training becomes a norm a few years from now.
As such I applaude US based JAA flight schools for taking the initiative of offering fair pricing compared to many European FTO's offering sky-high integrated packages with most of the flying in the US...