The real irony is that at every drop zone where I've flown or jumped, any training is done on the job...the CAA training also requires the training to be done as "live" drops, meaning that parachutists are being dropped...it's a revenue flight.
If a drop zone or operator is going to charge thousands of pounds, dollars, yen, or hen scratch, and is doing it on revenue flights when the skydivers are paying for the flight...it makes you wonder what it is exactly for which the pilot is paying. If the flight is already paid and the cost of the airplane taken care of...would that not indicate that the prospective pilot is really getting sodomized here, financially speaking?