Ekido - how and why airlines recruit has and always will be a bit of a mystery. From what I have seen in the industry no matter how good the forward planning there always seems to be a last minute rush to recruit. Often you will hear stories of people gettting hired today for a job starting Monday type of thing.
I know in my outfit the commercial teams invariably don't talk to the training department and then are aghast at the lead time in getting their precious airframes fully crewed. They will cite commercial sensitivity etc for playing their cards close to their chest.
The ex legacy airlines would have you believe that they have a recruitment plan in place to ensure that there are no retirement bulges. The likes of the big boys such as BA/Lufty would do this to a degree. Hence why they would take on a mix of pilots from 250hr through to 1000hr non type rated through to type rated experienced pilots.
As a general rule smaller airlines tend to feed into the bigger ones and wouldn't have as much loyalty from their employees hence recruit on the fly depending on their needs. The FR's of the world obviously find it more cost efficient to have low houred people in the RHS explaining the reason why they take on so many newbies.
Overall I tend to sit in the Farrell camp. I think there will be very limited opportunities for newbies in the near future. With FR stopping recruitment this will have a big impact. As you would know they were the largest recruiter by far of low hour pilots in Europe.