Originally Posted by USA1pilot
In my opinion it is good that people with a commercial License, but whitout experience apply to this kind of cadetships. Because why would you train even more pilots when there are thousands of pilots with all kinds of experience out there.
We should stop training large numbers of pilots until the suitable people with a License have a descent job. Therefore it is good to see that the licensed applicants are taken seriously!
You're looking at it from your own perspective, look at it from Aer Lingus'. Taking on cadets allows them to mould pilots to the standard they want, and by paying for most of their training by way of bonded employment, they are guaranteed to retain those pilots for a minimum number of years which isn't possible with direct entry pilots.
There will always be a demand for DE pilots though due to the long lead in time to train new cadets, so it's not like cadets will ever replace the stream of DE pilots.