Bruce,
As is often the case, I've just re-read my post and recognise that my last sentence probably comes across as sarcasm - I actually meant it in the literal sense....for many of the reasons you mention, limiting the route to "the airlines" in such a manner would be totally unworkable and fail to provide anything like a big enough stream of pilots to maintain the current fleets, let alone provide growth.
I don't know what the answer is, myself - but I do know that it's not really cricket to blame someone, anyone, for playing the hand that's dealt to them. I DO NOT advocate true P2F under any circumstances, but pretty much every single one of us thats gained the blue book in the last 2.5 years understands that if we can find a job at all, likely we'll be paying for at least the type rating, if not some form of line training as well.
As I think you said earlier, it's heartbreaking to see so many experienced crews treat the newbies with such contempt when actually it's the reality of the world that newly minted pilots are born into. Now i know many of the experienced crews will say that we should have known what we were getting ourselves into - well A) we did - at the time- but the subsequent economic slowdown was unprecedented in scale and vel[fer?]ocity which changed the landscape into which we emerged totally and B) Maybe so, but the same was true when you trained - but it didn't stop you did it? So why do you expect anyone else to act differently than you did?
My overall point however, was that I don't think many actually have a burning desire to fly jets and jets alone - it's the financial rewards that jets bring that cause that desire and further are necessary to provide any kind of economic sense to the investment, given the ever escalating cost of training.
Last edited by clanger32; 10th June 2010 at 09:43.