P2F, flexicrew etc is unknown to the majority of paying customers. How would it change their perception if they knew 1 in 3 FOs at EJ for example are on flexicrew contracts?!
I think a lot would be surprised but not enough to do anything about it or change their behaviour. I mean just the other day I was trying to book a last minute flight to Berlin, easy was about a third of the price of BA. Am I going to stop using easy in solidarity with those poor flexi pilots? As much as I would like to say yes obviously the answer is no as it would be for the vast majority of passengers. If their planes were falling out of the sky then that would be a different matter but you are not going to scare the public when talking about an airline that has never had a major accident...
At the end of the day the airline industry is there to make money and provide passengers with a service that they will travel on. It is not their to provide pilots with a job or apportion fairness in terms of which pilots get to fly for them.
In view of that it is really up to the unions and regulators to keep certain aspects of the modern day industry in check. Some reduction in T&Cs was always going to happen post deregulation but for the most part I lay the blame at the door of the more senior members of the profession for not stopping the spread of contracting and flexi crew when it started out. Similarly unions could have been a lot more active in dealing with issues like P2F. On specific issues like that there clearly is a role for more education of the public...but again it is not going to have a significant impact while for the most part European aviation remains so safe. The pilot body as a whole needs to deal with that sort of thing. I make these observations merely as an experienced PPL who knows a bit about the airline industry and knows a fair few military and airline pilots...
As you say, there will be fewer and fewer military pilots available as the years go by but, those military pilots leaving the services now are being overlooked for CTC cadets! Which is wrong, that invaluable experience should be grabbed with both hands. (1000 different hours over 1000 x the same hour!)
I agree it is perplexing that this is happening because military pilots do have a lot to bring to the table but for whatever reason easy have decided to go down the route of essentially just recruiting mostly from CTC with occasional openings like the recent one for experienced non-type rated pilots.
However provided it is proven to be safe airlines should be free to choose their recruitment policies in the same way they make other business decisions. I don't really like the way the system has evolved either but more and more airlines, I imagine for a combination of standardisation and cost reasons, are going down the route of contracting out ab initio training to a selected number of integrated schools. As I posted before...one has to concede that for the most part it seems to be working...
What I will say though is that although fixed wing military pilots are getting rarer the civilian world can learn a lot from military training standards and practices. Of course cost puts a limit on that to an extent but it is good to see that civilian flight schools have been slowly coming around to the idea of including aerobatics, more upset recovery training and a lot more scenario based instruction. Ultimately the improvement in training that will hopefully improve safety has to happen in this flight school environment and later in the airlines themselves because that is where the vast majority of the pilots today come from.