Really, how smart do you have to be to be a pilot? It's not like you are training surgeons who require both excellent intelligence and dexterity. Nor is it like investment banking where you need the brightest minds to come up with the best investment instruments or you will quickly lose out to the competition from rival banks.
A pilot is just a guy who can get the plane from point A to B safely, much like a bus driver. If the low cost carriers can get away with hiring self-funded cadets who aren't the brightest, more power to them. Why will you want to raise costs hiring someone brighter than necessary who probably will demand more pay? You might as well tell McDonald's to hire degree educated burger flippers to make safe burgers.
That is until something bad happens due to poor quality cadets being selected. This hasn't been an issue so far, except for the one case I saw on air crash investigations where a poor pilot who failed his exams several times but still managed to be made captain eventually crashed a plane. For now there is no indication on what level of intelligence is required for you to be a safe pilot, all the self funded pilots are chugging along fine. The bar is set pretty low and if you can clear the aptitude test you should do fine.
If this ever becomes an issue in the future, perhaps with several incidences, the airline will just improve their testing standards for pilot quality and the poor ones who pay their way through will get weeded out.
Last edited by purplehearts; 10th Nov 2013 at 00:30.