Punk666:
The EU market is different to the yanks. Their regional and private sector is bigger than ours hence why instructing and aerial work and corporate work is a realistic way of building hours before joining the airlines.
There are thousands and thousands of pilots flying for the regionals, corporate, or instructing in Europe, the airlines should hire among this pool ONLY like in north america. Let's first hire those thousands and thousands of pilots, then when the airlines will be short of experienced candidates we'll talk again.
You can see why its very attractive in these tough times.
Thing is that the discussion has never been on the fact Pay to Work is attractive or not.
Do you ask somebody who takes cocaine if the problem is attractiveness? Of course not. Problem is self respect, health and money.
Problem for Pay to Fly is that you have to pay to work (which is close to corruption), you don't build your experience that is necessary later to become captain, and you give the company the message you are their slave and they even can abuse you, it doesn't matter: after all you are only an airline pilot, not like you'd have huge responsabilities, high professional level, high background experience, and self confidence in reaching your goal via the honest entry doors.
Better be a cessna caravan pilot for life than an airline pilot who has no self respect.
The pilot job has in itself values that are necessary for the safety of the flight, like honesty, high experience level or self respect, and we will have to remind it to us again and again.
Punk666: in fact I more or less share your viewpoint, I only used some of your sentences to explain some details. Absolutely not against what you said, just used some parts of your post.