The pros and cons of Low experience. The 2 camps. Those talking of smoking holes (I wince when I hear that it's a bit daily mail). Those liberally talking up how wonderful cadets are, trainable alert pups. How the experienced guys can be bad old dogs too, with unchangeable spots. Its all a bit blurry and hard to generalise. Call me old fashioned but exceptions aside on the whole the more experienced guys have been there/seen it more. It's why TREs aren't cadets, you can't emulsion over that stuff. As a young guy when I got to that stage where you feel a bit sure having got your eye into the job, you know all the books, have read about lots of stuff and consider yourself a sharp young dog and a bit up to speed only to find myself in a situation where I learned off the experienced guy and got bumped back to ground, realising you can't fast track that stuff.
What you don't hear about is how experience helped in such and such a situation and the low hour guy learned that day or came away a little less sure of his hithertoo bulletproof self assured abilities. Or conversely how the long in the tooth guy thought he knew it all then had some new SOP pointed out to him by a new fella. We've all been there it works both ways.
I don't think it's really it to be honest. I think all the talk of smoking holes is just people venting their annoyance. It's easier to talk of smoking holes- shouldnt the authorities step in bla bla, than basically admit what really is getting right up a lot of people's nostrils. With thousands of hours and flying on the wrong type you can't join bla airline yet such and such with a large funding stream, through CTC can see himself through to the front row seats at BA for example but said BA will not take on the direct guy. The game has changed, years ago you did your time on smaller stuff and took your Blinking turn like we all did. When BA took cadets they still took DEP, same with other airlines.
I try to be impartial, it is what it is and you've got to deal with it. I sure wish I had 80 odd grand and no experience if it meant I stood a chance of joining the worlds favourite at the minute
. Maybe I should burn my licence and logbooks
? Actually if I had 80 odd grand I'd spend it on my kids future but I'm an old git