BEagle
PPL schools will merely offer the opportunity for PPL (and/or 'fATPL')-holding FIs to do some instructing. NO PAY - just refund of petrol money and perhaps the cost of lunch.
Hmmm... I seem to remember it was like that back in the '80s before everyone jumped on the 'commercial bandwagon'.
Experienced FIs, with bags of knowledge, instructing at weekends, students sponsored by airlines - and therefore not dependent entirely on the 'self-improver' route only (as is, generally, the case today).
A bit like the housing market - if there are no first-time buyers the market suffers. As with aviation, if there were no 'self-improvers' where would the industry have been during the past 10 years?!
I hope the likes of easyJet and Ryanair appreciate just how lucky they have been to avoid the (expensive) cost of pilot training thanks to the flying schools who have provided the means by which embryo pilots could gain the requisite experience - and who are now suffering and having to face possible litigation.
If the flying schools can't operate due to the cost of employing instructors, then the aviation industry will suffer and no one will be complacent then.
AJ
PS: The job of a B737 First Officer may be routine, but I never found it 'dull' - however it can't have been all that good as I have moved on to 'better' things outside aviation. The thought of doing basically the same job day-in-day-out just never appealed. I'm pleased I 'did it', but as keen as I was on flying, not as a transport pilot for the rest of my working life!