Wally, all ICUS was in-house. There was the luxury of natural progression. Start a newbie in a 172 doing scenic then onto a 182 with short charter and then onto 206 freight charter up to 210 for IFR freight and a higher performance. From there onto 402 and Navajo chieftain and then it was goodbye from us with usually 1500 - 1800 hours under the belt to RPT.
Now it is straight to airvan,206,210 less work,seasonal. So we now need command hours and experiance as we dont like to shove a newbie straight into a larger higher performing aircraft. Like most operators we don't have the luxury of bringing a pilot up through the the levels anymore as the demand and economics for small aircraft doing scenic's is just not there.
For twins we can still get a good pilot up there, and try to whenever we can, but we don't usually have that option as the lack of full time work for the singles, means when a twin pilot leaves us we don't have a suitable replacement good enough to get to our standard from the single ranks so its easier to look for a twin houred pilot to replace them.
Company policy is 1000 hours command and 500 hours ME TT before a twin, single pilot operation seat.