Batty_boy says: "If you have money you have a better chance of becoming an airline pilot regardless of your actual talents via the approved school route.
If you dont then its a tougher route, used to be via the states, where the flying is the mutts nuts and the standards high ( in general).
the arrogance of these 200 hr middle class dutch plonkers is astounding. they are confusing privilage, or wealth with ability."
I'd like to comment on this statement, since I think it contains a lot of prejudices that exist about ab-initio students, which in my opinion are not justified.
When making the choice for a career as an airline pilot, several options exist. The most straightforward way to achieve this goal is to follow an ab-initio training program at a flight school with a known reputation, that has proven to deliver their graduated student directly to the airlines.
For me it was a very logical step to first try to be accepted in such a program. Unfortunately, nearly everybody pursuading a professional career in aviation in The Netherlands will therefore initially apply to schools like KLS, NLS and EPST. Because of the large number of applicants only those who pass the various selection stages are offered a position in the training program. Key factors in a succesfull application are motivation and ability and NOT, as batty_boy points out, how rich, wealthy and arrogant you are.
For KLS a large part of the selection is done by an independent testing office (Aeromedical Institute nowadays) and I think it is clear that they don't test you for a couple of days to find out how much money you have on your bank account or whether you are arrogant enough to make it as an airline pilot.
KLS has the policy that no matter what you're financial situation is, once you are accepted for training, the bank will provide you with a loan. In case of failure of the student during training or the drop-off of a student due to other (for example medical) reasons, a special fund will take over your debts. This provides the student with a much smaller financial risk and also guarantees that no matter how poor or rich you are, your chances of getting into the program are equal.
I also disagree with Bokkerijder who points out that being accepted by KLS or NLS has everything to do with 'knowing the right person at the right place'. I can tell you that from our class there is nobody that has a connection in anyway to the airlines that KLS supplies its students to. As I pointed out earlier, the selection is carried out by an independent institute and they are totally not interested in the abilities of your father or mother, brother or sister, who might all be very capable pilots. It is YOU that is the subject of the testing and YOU have to prove you have the ability and motivation to make it as an airline pilot.
Another point of disagreement with Bokkerijder concerns the fact that we 'look down upon the self-improver'. In fact most of us are very much aware of the amount of commitment it takes to walk that road. The experience you gain is invaluable and you will have encountered all the real-life probems and challenges facing a pilot, that we as ab-initio's will only face once we land our first job at an airline.
The difference between the self-improver and we as ab-initios at KLS, lies in my opinion in the fact, that from day 1 we are flying according to the procedures as used by KLM. This means that when flying light singles for your intial-training you are already working in the multi-crew-concept, fly in the airliner style and keeping up a very high pace of training. The last part of the training (after only 6 months from your first flight) is done on an Airbus A310 6 DOF full flight simulator. When you are finished you have been transformed into a KLM-robot. That's the reason we are hired by airlines like KLM and Lufthansa with only 200 flight hours and not because self-improvers would be less capable of doing that same job.
I don't think that the statistics can prove that airlines employing ab-initios are less safe to fly with than airlines who do not. It will probably remain a point of discussion whether it is a good thing to have relatively inexperienced first and second officers on board of your aircraft.
Maybe some pilots(captains) who have been flying with ab-initios can more objectively participate in this discussion. The current discussion seems to be one of the ab-initios against the self-improvers which is not a good thing, since we finally all have to share the same cockpit, work together and trust each others abilities and experience, no matter what way led us into that position as an airline pilot.