Crosswind limits,
I agree that not all cadets are worthy of sponsorship and that some duds slip through the nets (did someone say something about politically correct recruiting bias? not me!)
But on the whole they do perform better. Your mate who performed on a par/better than EPST (who?) chaps/chapesses should have been put forward by the CCAT instructors. Perhaps this scheme is no longer in operation at CCAT since BA doesn't use them anymore?
Cut and pasted from another post...
Some of the reasons why I think BA uses the Cadet scheme:
i) It allows them to select the best individuals and monitor their progress at all times during training. If you start failing your ground school or flying exams then you get chopped. With some pilots out there having struggled and scraped a licence then conversions may be failed and result in training/chopping cost - happened to a Capt from Brymon when I was doing my course.
ii) The cadets give them anything from 27 to 35 years service. Thus negating a short term fire fighting approach to recruitment.
iii) Cadets are on reduced salary for the first five years (CEP starting £22k DEP 32k?) and pay back £15k out of their pay packet aswell. The cost is therefore recovered.
iv) Diminishing pool of sutiable DEPs. For years they have tried to recruit from the DEP pool, when you've looked at people a couple of times and "thrown them back in" you run out of fish to catch and select. Now as for people who have been rejected I am sorry, as I personally know friends who I think would be great for BA with a B757/A320 rating who have been rejected. I don't know sometimes what basis they are evaluating on.
On a more positive note,
a) If you go through one of the flight schools BA uses/d and get good reports there is a semi sponsorship scheme whereby you will be lumped with other cadets at Jet Orientation Course. This is/was HS125-800 course, if you continue to glow you get a job offer.
b) The long term forecasts remain good for the industry and in the future should BA be very short of pilots we can see a repeat of the 1987/88 scenario when lots of DEPs with relatively low hours were hired to fill the vacancies.
In the meantime my personal recommendation is do something in the meantime to fall back on whether it be a Modern Apprenticeship (as WWW supports) or do a degree/work in the city (as I did post Gulf).
Good luck to all the Wannabes!