Your absolutely correct boardpig. There appears to be a ready supply of young and inexperienced people willing to apply to either the cadetship, or as general entry, even though the conditions are what many believe substandard for this day and age.
I may cop some flack here, (nothing new I suppose) but the attraction for these people is they don't have to serve the apprentiship that most of us old hands had to. I wonder just how many would still pursue the profession if this type of scheme was not available. Money certainly isn't the problem (unless of course Mum and Dad have been niave enough to mortgage the house for them). $42K per year probably seems reasonable when living at home and after working at Macdonalds. The problem for them, and REX for that matter is that this lack of real world experience comes at a price. REX will have us believe that "experience is overated", that cadetships are the way of the future. Time will tell on that front. But even though there is a seemingly inexhaustable supply of these young wannabes lining up, the essential problem is that none of them will be either qualified and/or ready for command for years to come!
Commands at REX are still running at approx 7 months. The Check and Training system is under enormous pressure just to keep Line pilots current. Upgrade times are falling behind, the available candidates with the min experience for command are now becoming critical, and endorsement training becoming more protracted, and on it goes
If the company could, I'm sure they would be happy to have their aircraft fully crewed by 200 hour First Officers. As this is not possible, then the real crunch will probably come during the middle of next year when a large number of experienced captains finally give up and move on. Not being able to replace these people will sadly see a dramatic increase in the reduction of services.
Watch this space.