No sensible airline would ever offer sponsorship / mentorship with a cast-iron guaranteed job offer 14 months down the road. The industry changes way too quickly for that, and recruitment plans change accordingly. In Flybe's case, that means going from a requirement for 10-15 new FOs per month to zero (i.e. fully crewed) within the space of a few months. How is a training system with a lead-time of nearly 18 months supposed to cope with that? It's an unpalatable fact of life, but as Rollerboy says, it would not be the first time that cadets have finished training to discover there are no jobs waiting for them.
FTOs will always tell people that 'now is a great time to train' - they have an obvious interest in doing so. Airlines which sponsor (and there are precious few of them these days) will plan based on projections of the market 18 months down the road, with the caveat that those plans are always subject to change. For nearly a year now, those of us who actually work in the industry have been telling anyone who'll listen that this is an awful time to be training, and that the job market for 200hr CPLs (or MPLs) will be grim for at least the next 2 to 3 years. Is anyone really surprised that there are no jobs out there?