Third party training
This just has to be one of those ideas that only a bean counter can conjure up. One of the aspect of training that sets the TR taught by a third party instructor apart from one carried out in house has nothing to do with the quality of instruction. The Third party TRI/SFI can be just as good, if not better than the guy that does it every now and then (bearing in mind that the guy in the TRTO/FTO is doing it every day).
No, the big difference is that the 'in-house' guy has 'ownership' of the people and probably knows the candidate intimately along with his strengths and weaknesses. What is more, there is an inbuilt desire to deal with those weaknesses rather than just submit the guy to a 'tick-in-the-box', 'yes-you-can-have-three-goes', groundhog-day re-run of the same-old, same-old, prof check. The third party guy has no incentive to be more or less stringent that the regs require and 99.9% of the time this equates to a 'pass'.
With in house training there is at least the possibility that the candidate will be given some extra training where this can be justified. I do not detect the use this avenue in third party training.
EVIDENCE BASED TRAINING is the way ahead, 'competence' should be the watchword not 'compliance'. God save us from 'compliance' if we go down that road forever we will be condemned to a spiral of decline. Just take a look at how the world creates the flight instructors - horrendous in many cases. Pilots appointed as instructors with little (relevant) or no training and sim instructors (i.e.. the future) shoved into the box, shown how to turn it on and told to get on with it.
Third party training, if it becomes the norm, will be a triumph of financial convenience over the desire for optimum levels of competence.
G.