It's 2 sides of the coin and both have valid arguments .
1) fresh pilots will do whatever it takes to collect hours , after all there is no turning back unless they want to burn their usd 80k cpl blue license or another usd 20-30k for their TR, if they don't do it, other thousands of pilots worldwide will do it. as they say piloting is a dog eat dog world
2) The other one will be worried on the t and c and if others are collecting valuable jet time, they know they can never be promoted or jump to an airline which do not like non jet time hours. therefore they are stuck flying thier current gig and earn peanuts.
With so many success stories of p2f going to world class airline ( see below taken from another thread ) : -
Others did pass screenings, did new Typeratings, did well in groundschool and moved into other airlines :
- Turkish Airlines , about 40-50 guys joined (or are joining) THY in the past 8 months
- Scoot has 10+ guys
- Qatar has a fair share (15+) of Ex-Lion guys as F.O. 777 or F.O. A320 operating
- Hong Kong Airlines / Hong Kong Express has about 10+
- FlyDubai has 10+ on 737
- Jet2.com has 10+ on 737
- British Airways 6+ on Widebody second officers mostly
- Primera Air 3+ on the 737
- Oman Air 3+ on 737
- ArkeFly has 8+ on the 767 and 737
- Etihad 4+ on multiple widebody's
- Norwegian has 10+ on the 737's
- Emirates is having Lion Air guys
- Cathay Pacific 2+ as S.O.
- Air Baltic 4+
- Ethiopian 2+
- Garuda had 10+ guys, but had to lay-off/fire expats two years ago.
- Insel Air
.......etc....etc....
When it comes to airline business, time and money is essential before your competitors kills you and cause to to bankrupt. Most pilot think of the pilot mentality but do not put their shoe as an airline boss .
If you see the list above, why world class airline likes p2f, because to train a pilot from zero or those with a CPL can take anywhere from months to years ( if zero hours ).
Now they have a pilot with hours, just put them in a couple of hours in sim and some ground papers, viola, they are good to fly.
Airline are smart too, they will only chose the best and all the pilots would still have to pass the sim, test and interview.
as mention by captjns, airline like EK, EY, LH, CX, BA, AF, VX, KLM , he was wrong by saying they do not take p2f. in fact if you have the hours and you are a local citizen, pass the recruitment stages, you are done.
as that is exactly the above airline which we all know will never do p2f ( national pride and they have the cash to finance training vs a low cost airline ), which is also helping the industry, why?
if a person who wants to pay a cpl, rating , LT and fly in the worst condition and some even with no salary, he is not stupid to do it if he can't taste " success and sweet " after all this sacrifice.
With the above world class taking in so many p2f pilots, those who are already there knows that the time they spend in Indonesia and the decision and risk they took all paid off, indeed very handsomely! The salary they make in all these world class airline easily pay off the money they spend previously.