There are two separate issues here. The first is safety. My contention is that because the clear safety implications of the earlier p2f schemes which involved people paying for line training, these schemes have now ceased at easyJet and in many other airlines. It was clearly unacceptable that people with money buy their way into the right seat of a commercial jet without proper selection or receipt of salary. That was an enormously unsuccessful experiment that has quite rightly stopped. The current schemes are different from a safety perspective and should not be compared to the one which led to the accident at Thomas Cook. It is also worth saying that the fact that one of you had a duff day with a 200 hour p2f pilot is hardly a scientific examination of the scheme's success. If it is any consolation, I have had some shocking days out with some FOs with way more hours than that! As I have said previously, a low-houred pilot is vulnerable to making big errors. That is a stage which every one of us went through and we should not be too high and mighty about remembering that. The overwhelming majority of low-houred pilots I fly with are dedicated and keen to learn. I find them a pleasure to be with, and if treated with respect and decency are great colleagues to spend the day with.
The second issue is the continual degredation of terms and conditions to which 747JJ and others refer. That is an altogether different matter. What has become known as p2f (pay-to-fly) is simply a misnomer. It should be p4tr (pay-for-type-rating) as that is a much more accurate description of what is happening. My argument is that because you do not like the p4tr schemes, it does not mean they are intrinsicly unsafe. It does, however, mean that flying has become the pastime of the rich and is not available to people of talent regardless of background. I am not a socialist, but that strikes me as fundamentally unfair. It is also dire to see the truly awful financial offerings that easyJet and others have come up with. As I have said previously, I am not sure how our managers sleep in their beds at night - taking huge bonuses bought and paid for by starvation wages. Nonetheless, the flying rates being achieved are significantly better than those envisaged, and the tales of pilots eating live alley cats and road kills to survive have not yet materialised. And yet the same responses to these Ts&Cs keep appearing - 'the deal is rubbish and I shall leave BALPA in protest'! That folks is insanity and just exaccerbates the problem. If we had every pilot in BALPA, this issue would not have arisen. Every one of you who leaves BALPA in protest are just signing the death warrant of our industry. We are dealing with unscrupulous managers who gladly line their pockets with our money. The only answer is to stick together and fight it out. No doubt these comments will send some of you over the edge, but that is the way it is.