The advantages to the airline of taking a young chap with a fresh license and paid for type rating from CTC are as follows:
Long term loyality - as the cadet is desperate to pay back their loan
Cheaper salary as the cadet starts at the beginning of the payscale
Known ability - coming from one of the worlds best intergrated courses
Ability to order pilots direct from CTC and have them delivered and trained in house.
1. Not necessarily any long term loyalty. Once they get some time on type and a better offer comes along they will consider it like any other pilot would. Even more true if they want to fly something bigger/ do longhaul.
2. Cheaper salary than a non-ctc pilot starting at the bottom of the payscale?
3. Known ability. Some airlines have questioned this over the last few years where several ctc cadets have been 'let go' during or after line training. Probably due to ctc standards slipping as the demand was so high. My airline has started up its TRTO again to do their own type rating training.
4. Can't see the great advantage there, indeed many trained by CTC are taught generic 'easy', 'jet2' or 'BA' sops as the trainers don't know the airlines' sops well enough.
I have done 2 jet type ratings with CTC, paid for by 2 different airlines and am currently a trainer with one of their (former) customer airlines who have been slowly getting less happy with the product. Indeed on my last type rating I think I taught the trainers more about my airline's ops than they taught me about the type.
I think what it comes more down to is CTC taking the financial risk if one of their pilots doesn't make the grade, and of course cost. That is what airlines liked about their product. If the product doesn't maintain its standard then the customers become less happy with that product. Now we have a recession the demand has fallen away completely. Over the next year or two this could be good for CTC as the supply will increase and therefore they can get more choosy again. This is what happened through the last downturn. However, the short term looks a bit bleaker for them in my opinion.
PP