I've flown with loads of low hour cadets and have to say that they have all done a great job and none have been out of their depth. However, these have all been carefully selected and had their training monitored from day one. The military has low hour guys fly big jets and why do they not have accidents?
The real problem comes when you hire the lowest common denominator. I'm talking about about taking on pilots because they will pay for training, work for peanuts on a contract;. These are mostly low hour pilots with naive expectations and unshakable optimism. Such pilots appeal to the bean counters that run airlines.
Both the the Colgan and Pinnacle crashes both featured pilots that were graduates of the Gulfstream pay to fly programme. They paid their way into the airlines and had a history of problems. In the UK we had the seemingly forgotten MyTravel accident.
http://www.aaib.gov.uk/cms_resources...JZ%2012-08.pdf
This airline was, via an agency charging 35k to low hour pilots for a type rating and line training. One of their customers had failed a sim assesment on the 737 so they decided to put him on the A320. After struggling in the sim (landings) and taking two attempts at the base check (landings) , they let him loose with passengers on line training and......he smashed the aircraft so hard into the deck it was investigated by the AAIB and caused serious damage. Turned out from day one in a Cessna he struggled.
As management hammer away at the terms and conditions this is the kind of pilot that the industry will attract. I suspect that the UK will have its own Pinnacle/Colgan style crash and only then will the regulators act and things start to get better.