flyhigh85, re your post #317, I don't recall ever extolling the virtues of new pilots becoming instructors before moving on to jets, but I certainly believe that, unlike the product of airline cadet schemes or approved courses, a young pilot who has gained significant experience as a single pilot in light singles and twins - (what's commonly known as General Aviation in Australia, and I know is almost non-existent in Europe) - gains a far better breadth of aviation experience, (including a few scares and quite possibly having to make a few quite literally life and death decisions him (or her) self) at a young age. (That "him or herself" is the important phrase in that last sentence.)
The average ex-cadet is usually very good at flying an airliner, but the moment circumstances demand that he/she operate their aircraft outside that well defined path, (something that if it ever occurs, might not occur until he or she is in the left seat of an A320 or possibly a widebody), he or she is encountering whatever is confronting him or her for the very first time. (As an example, perhaps not a great one, I know a fellow in my last airline who made it to the left hand seat of a B777 and who proudly boasted that he'd never done a diversion - ever - in his career, [let alone, as the captain, have to deal with something a bit frightening].)
I honestly think the "GA pilots learn bad habits they can't be trained out of" argument is spurious. There's a lot of money to be made by flying schools conducting approved courses - and a lot of money to be saved by airlines - by insisting that new hires into airlines go through an approved course.
I accept that it's a different world today to the one I cut my aviation teeth in, and I accept the GA route is no longer as widely available (and never really was for most European pilots). I'm just saying "more's the pity".
The whole point of this thread is the fact that most of us (at least us Old Farts, but now we've been joined by Airbus Industries) are decrying the falling standards in piloting skills, and pilots who did 1500 hours or so in lighties before "making it" into an airline job, I think, were a better all round product than someone (the average today) who steps into the right hand seat of an airliner with 200 odd hours in an approved training school, (or with MPL, maybe 60 hours!!!) where the employer often as not insists on maximum use of automation.