Personally I had >1,500hrs on light aircraft before I sat in an airliner and, yes, I think it did give me something more than a 200hr cadet had. If nothing else I was better on the radios..
That's by the by. The point I would make is that if the FO position becomes a profit centre, and if that profit centre only works with low houred cadets, then only low houred cadets will ever be recruited to the profit centre.
So you don't get the mix.
You don't get the GA/flying instructors. You don't get the regional turboprop pilots. You don't get the suddenly-redundant highly experienced rival airline guys.
All you get is 200hr, £100,000 in debt cadet pilots from one or two FTO's.
That's not a healthy mix. It could certainly skew the experience levels.
On another point do not expect anybody to be quaking in their boots about the media picking up on this. There is no public interest in a story about people who wannabe airline pilots having a tougher time than they used to have. For most people paying for a forklift truck drivers course is an almost unimaginable investment in their own training. Earning £25,000 an unthinkably good wage. Daft buggers spending the price of a house to get jobs paying double, triple, quadruple the average wage is of no interest or relevance to them.
They want to pay £5 to go to Malaga and they don't care who is driving the 'plane' where they come from, how they trained or what they earn. They. Don't. Care.
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