Captain Spam Can - I totally agree. I too feel fundamentally ill-at-ease at this constant cadet bashing. The real issue is that easyJet has taken too many and not had a balanced recruiting policy.
Lord Spandex Masher - I am actually an admirer of your other contributions elsewhere. Most people on here are either semi-literate, ill-informed or lack the power of written expression to present a coherent argument. You are in none of those categories and have a genuine insight into the airline industry. I am far from being in disagreement with you over the keeping out of experienced pilots at the expense of employing cadets. As I said earlier, it is the scale of them where the problem lies.
angelorange - it is absolutely not true to say that easyJet has not taken experienced pilots for 4 years. We have taken a significant number of A320-rated pilots over that period - I was training some only last week. What we have not taken is ex-military or turbine pilots. Like you, I believe that has been an error.
babotika - I presume from your comments you work for BA. You say, 'definitely not the minimum-training-and-it'll-be-fine-attitude in orange land.' To say that is a misrepresentation of the situation at easyJet is an understatement. Such crass comments reveal a woeful ignorance of the situation here, and whilst I believe we have made errors in limiting our input of experienced pilots I would challenge the view that somehow BA cadets are better quality or better-trained than ours. I am a product of the BA training system at Cranebank myself and greatly admired it. There is nothing I have seen, however, that tells me CTC are producing a less comprehensive training regime. Your observations that around half of BA pilots come straight from a cadet scheme of some kind would probably be very similar to the overall picture at easyJet. Others may have more accurate figures to dispute that, but it is undoubtedly true that a significant percentage of our pilots have come from a wide variety of backgrounds and not just direct entry cadets.