Mercenary Pilot
It's not uncommon to see less then 3000 TOTAL (Captain + First Officers hours) experience on the flightdeck in the UK these days.
That's not true. I work for one of the mobs who've had the lowest times to command in Western Europe of any narrow body Jet operator. While we did promote people to Capts. with 3000hrs TT, they couldn't fly with new Co-Pilots for their first hundred hours on the line. I joined with the bare minimum as a F/O, just over 200hrs, line training approx 100hrs, plus 100hrs probation=400hrs. New Captains 3000+100 restricted/probation=3100. 3500 was the theoretical minimum, which is 500 hrs more, which is nearly an extra years experience. On top of that it was not
that common as you imply.