2 bobs worth
I have held back and enjoyed watching the debate for quite some time :-
"can a cadet pilot from a production line flying school be a help or a hindrance when released to the line as an FO?"
Having just retired after flying with just such low time pilots for the past 12 years please allow me to comment.
Flying has many challenges - and we all discover new ones every day.
My last job was flying 4 sectors a day/night RPT in a 180 pax jet in the middle east with normally 12 hour - 14 hour duty periods, into 26 local and 15 regional airports with brand new national FO's.
Fourteen of those airports were uncontrolled OCTA.
Civilian traffic was light but there were always military transports and helos to make things interesting.
The cadets, who mostly paid for their own pilot training up to FAA CPL in the US were from a varied background - with different levels of enthusiasm for the profession of pilot and technical backgrounds.English was their second, third or fourth language.
On a good day most of these new guys did an adequate job, and most were eager to expand their knowledge base. But, as would be expected, when something unusual happened - all bets were off !! It often became single pilot IFR for a few moments while things settled down.
It was a steep learning curve for them but most adapted well.
And no, we didn't have snow/sleet - but we did have severe dust storms and runways contaminated by blowing sand !! GPS approaches were available at some of the more remote stations and were a great help.
Generally after a few months and several hundred hours these new cadets became fully fledged FOs; after 1000 hours they moved up to 747, MD11 or 777.
It was not ideal to have such low time co-pilots but just as other countries have learnt to deal with this new career path, so I fear must Australian aviation adapt. And at least the Multi Crew Licence will give the new cadets here a better understanding of what is required of them on the line
happy landings !!