400 odd hrs on light aircraft taught me a limited amount that i could take onto my first jet,
Perhaps you underestimate the usefullness of that time, private jet. Imagine if you will how you would have coped with only 100 hours. By 400 hours you would no doubt be sufficiently compfortable in actual flying to have enough spare capacity to take in the info you need to cope with flying a jet. The more I fly the better I get and I was a damm sight better pilot at 400 hours than I was at 100.
I'm not completely against the MPL, it has it's merits. The 'good intention' is to provide a candidate who has most of the training and part of the skills needed to be a good airline pilot. But it's not for the benefit of the new pilot. It's for the airline. It saves the airline time and money.
What bothers me about it is the reduction in flying hours. Particularly solo hours. I think it reduces the role of pilot to that of a machine operator. This is in line with many people's perception of airline flying as simply being procedural. 'All you do is punch a few buttons'.
Quite possibly the CPL training needs to be changed to meet the needs of the industry. Maybe aspects of MPL airline type training should be incorporated into the CPL syllabus. I fear that the current MPL system if it caught on would produce a generation of airline pilots who haven't got the basic airmanship skills to cope with real emergencies not previously practised on a sim.
You simply cannot escape the fact that an airliner, despite what the average SLF is made to think, is in fact a big complicated aeroplane that operates in a hostile environment and is at the mercy of the whims of nature at times. You still needs pilots who can fly the thing. Otherwise all you would need is for the senior cabin crew member to type in the destination and push the big green button marked GO!