How easy it is to be at the top looking down from an ivory tower dirinking posh wine and wishing the poor people would move as they are spoiling your view. As I read comments from the fly_antonov end of the scale I wonder how they ever became pilots. So many people here despise those pilots whose parents lent them the money yet would only congratulate those who became surgeons following a very expensive public school education. I have been a parent for many years and have had no hesitation in doing everything I have to get my kids a good education. Mercifully that has not extended to pay for flying training, but had that been the right move I would have done so (money permitting!). The bottom line is parents look after their children as if they don't then no one else will. Therefore a pro-active devoted parent gives his children more of a start in life than a single, cash-strapped parent who can barely keep their head above water. It is utterly 'unfair', but it is nonetheless what has happened since the dawn of time. You can hardly blame a parent for wanting the best for their child - that is one of the key things we are on this earth to do.
So do we now deny places in airlines to anyone who went to public school? Or do we check to see if some parents paid off too much student debt? You cannot really blame people for wanting to be pilots - we all did at one stage. I am personally very wary of this 'holier than though' attitude. Mercifully, within easyJet there is a more gracious view prevailing and I trust that there are still some others out there who can see the hideous plight of these new pilots. There again, I suppose fly_antonov was born in an orphanage, taught himself to read and write, sold plastic bottles to passers by to fund his university education and fought his way to the top of his profession with no help from anyone else. After that sponsors queued to be priveleged to fund his flying training due to his exceptional apptitude. If I only I had been so talented myself then it would all have been so easy.