Bignumber,
I understand that completely. Although some might have to punch their way through my veneer of sarcasm, I really don't blame individuals for being attracted to, or signing up to these schemes. To some extent I don't blame the operators for offering these schemes either. If the regulator and the insurance companies and the travelling public are happy with it, who am I to criticise?
The problem is that eventually it becomes self defeating. Like all pyramids it needs to keep enticing new blood to succeed. What use is a First Officer with 1000 hours experience on type, if all the airlines want is 250 hour folk who are willing to rent the seat for any number of months. When they then work for free, they are not quite as attractive as the "payers", but none the less far better than actually having to pay someone to sit there. Unchecked, I can see these pages in 10 years time being filled with threads saying "what use is 1000 hours on an airbus, when the airlines won't pay me and only want renters in the right hand seat?" Perhaps the next generation of 4000 hour captains will also need to pay their way into the job. It only takes enough people willing to do it, to procure their advantage and
voila you have a market. Hopefully that won't happen, but you are seeing the early shoots now.
As for daddies and their thick wallets, I think I need to take a stand in defence of daddies. Firstly those thick wallets are getting a lot thinner these days. There seems to be a general perception that us daddies happily pander to any whim our offspring present us with, and that we will abandon all common sense and caution and sign away our homes and savings in an attempt to make the fruit of our loins look like Leonardo de Caprio in that film where he was draped in wall to wall stewardesses. Popular misconception I am afraid. Those thick wallets were not amassed by our collective stupidity. More so, our offspring have only recently stopped their 5 year campaign of targetted hatred against us, for having the sheer affrontery to bring them forth into this world. Although we are naturally relieved and bemused by this new found desire and ambition on their part, and we are reticent to do anything to discourage this single minded doggedness, we still retain a healthy suspicion, scepticism and sense of proportion for the most part. Alas, whilst we may be happy to lend them proceeds from the treasury, they will not be given the keys to the kingdom just yet.
Parents will rightly do all they can to help their children achieve a goal (whatever it might be,) but the idea that they will sacrifice themselves in the process, is a tad old fashioned these days. It might have been true up to the age of 13, but we have had to develop a sense of preservation during the subsequent 5 years, so that both we and the offspring actually survived each day!
