Ivan
No offense, but I have to agree with Clog's first statement
You say"...there will always be surplus pilots out there..." but you cannot back that up. Yes historically this has been the case, but in the last few years there have been many factors to change that.
1) Cost - due to changes in the tax structure and the difficulty of JAA the cost of an ATPL course is up by around £10-15 000. This puts it to the level where no bank will fund the lot without security, and many people will not or cannot risk their own funds.
2) JAA course structure - the course is more difficult, and no longer alows unapproved training. Therefore fewer take the course, more fail to complete it, and the great source of instructors self-improving has gone, as have the source of air-taxi pilots with non-approved training needing more time before airlines will consider them.
3) JAA requires all instructors to have a CPL before they can earn money. This means either (a) fewer instructors and less GA or (b) more low-time CPL and frozen ATPL instructing, for mor expensive GA and fewer available to the air-taxi operations. I suspect a mix of the two, but both tend to reduce the number of pilots around in commercial aviation, especially with no self-improvers teaching.
4) Rules over GA are tending to get stricter (apart from the NPPL) so making it more expensive. With other increases in costs and increasing willingness of councils to take note of noise complaints this will reduce the amount of GA, the traditional source of most commercial pilots.
There has traditionally been an excess of pilots in this country, enough to supply many middle- and far-eastern airlines. This will not necessarily be the case in the next few years.