Dear Guvnor,
A little Dutch aviation history :
For decades the KLS and NLS supplied the major Dutch airlines with pilots. The KLS generally delivered them to the KLM and the NLS mostly to Martinair and Transavia.
The people on the selection committees with these airlines were mostly KLS or NLS graduates, so this laid a base for a “I wash your back, if you wash mine.”
Until roughly the ‘80’s….
Along comes the ‘self improver,’ in Holland commonly referred to as a ‘free market’ pilot. These pilots were frustrated of being excluded from aviation, because they did not have the money for these flight schools, or did not know the right people (it used to help if daddy or an uncle is a captain 747…
to get accepted.
The duopoly of KLS and NLS is threatened and an effective campaign is launched to label these self improvers as “inferior” pilots, “poorly trained” in the USA. The people on the selection panels do their bit to protect the duopoly and raise the standards for pilots who have NOT been trained by the NLS or KLS. Self improvers need to have a minimum of 500 hours on a turbo prop, while KLS and NLS graduates get an interview with 150 hours on a piston single and some hours on a Seneca. This has caused many Dutch pilots to roam the world looking for work. As you can see in the above posts, there are a lot of self improver Dutch pilots flying all over Europe.
Now in the late 90’s and the beginning of this decade KLM, Martinair and the other airlines are almost not hiring. Strangely the few pilots they did hire, had a lot more experience then their ‘own’ bred pilots.
Gee, I wonder why ?
So, because of the poor job market in the Netherlands, the KLS and NLS are dumping their graduates all over Europe and (again !) spoil the chances for any pilot who does not have the correct flight school name on his/her resume. Effectively they are doing to Europe what they have done for decades in Holland and it’s not a pretty picture ! On top of that the JAA is, as batty_boy correctly pointed out, encouraging this ! Fantastic !
So, to summarise, as a free market/self improver pilot, I (along with a LOT of my colleagues) are not happy to continuously get screwed by these flight schools. Yes, there ARE sour grapes ! Sour DUTCH grapes.