Over here the 200 wonder cadet is a thing that has been normal for the last 60 years in airlines, so nothing new at all about it.
Flight International 5-11 April 2011.
Editorial Comment on page 9.
Headline: TRAGICALLY FAMILIAR
Now that you put my quote in context to accidents of african airlines i guess i have to say what i mean by "over here". I was talking of course about western european airlines which use a very thorough selection and training program, not about african airlines with in general (and usually ethiopean is not counted into that) very poor standards.
I was a product of one of such training programs myself (Lufthansa, however not for Lufthansa themselves) and work now in an airlines that uses a similar program. There is a very good reason to train your own pilots. You can choose extremely careful who to take on for flight training, then monitor them every step on the way and get exactly what you want. And of course flying OEI raw data approaches is normal part of that training and of course checking.
When it comes to direct entry pilots we have to apply the same thorough testing, but we have to be more thorough during training as those pilots quite often have to unlearn quite a bit of their prior experience, especially if the background is single hand flying or mostly VFR stuff, 2000 hours dropping parachuters is not really useful in an airliner.
Our aim is not to get the cheapest, it is rather to get the best suited with a nearly guaranteed success during training and fitting in well with the existing pilot corps, replacing someone halfway through his typerating (which is payed for by the company of course) is extremely expensive, better to be sure that the individual in question has a high chance of success. And quite often we see that in young pilots, but we do like to take on more experienced ones as well if they fit into the mold.
It is mainly not about hours as the main pointer for experience though, it is about selection and training aimed for the intended operation.