I somewhat agree and somewhat disagree. Having experienced the civilian world as a CPL holder before I joined, I have small insight into that world.
It is a very unfortunate that the organisations in the best positions to provide the training aren't due to money. So the industry has to rely on a 6% pass rate in an exam to weed out its lower performers. That does not exactly stop people from overseas with qualifications attained in a system with a much higher pass rate, being targeted by these organisations ( or talked about being targeted). Are you getting a better product there or not?
My argument is that they should be teaching relevance. Instead of wasting people's time and money on exams that require you to use calculations to six decimal places, on an aircraft built on slide rules, with charts designed before calculators. That should be invested in teaching the relevant skills to today's modern machinery. Im not saying don't teach or examine this stuff, just maybe it can be refocused.
As for growing pilots, the guts of the training on fuel planning I had before my first conversion was that the SGR of the PC9 was around 2lb/nm. The conversion was taught as type specific straight from the flight manual. Very easy to learn, you can do it without a calculator... As for the environment. We still share the same airways, fly the same SIDS, and burn Jet A1.
It's a good topic, change is not always bad, running out of fuel is.
