I'm not 'defending' Flexicrew, I'm indifferent about it. On the one hand it is a far from ideal arrangement, but on the other hand it gets low hours pilots into the right hand seat far quicker than going modular. Whatever way you get there is going to incur a great deal of savings and/or a loan of some kind.
The big problem with this statement is that it can be used to defend just about any mutation of the 'deal' for cadets in the future. In 5 years when ryanair are offering unpaid internships for 12 months will it be acceptable because "it gets low hours pilots into the right hand seat?"
Getting in to the RHS of a commercial passenger aircraft is clearly the ambition of most low houred pilots. And why wouldn't it be - no one spends £100k to fly twins around Africa for 5 years 'paying their dues'. But clearly if people continue to flock to places like CTC in their droves, the deal with only ever get
worse, not better. It just simple supply and demand at the end of the day.
I'm with transcendental on this one. There will never, ever be a shortage of cadets and therefore never any reason to improve the deal on offer.