Bealzebub and John Smith. I acknowledge that you are very good at making articulate argument against experience and in favour of these cadet programs. It is clear with the Statistics you have to hand that you have been making these arguments for years.
The problem I have is that what you're saying goes against what I have experienced recently. I have been flying heavy jet aircraft outside of the UK. Many of the F/O's were low hour cadets. It was clear with these guys that there was no real selection. You had roughly 40% of them who were good solid Pilots and 60% whose landings varied from poor to dangerous.
I made the point before but I am going to make it again, when I did my course in the UK in the late 80's, it was very hard to pass the initial instrument rating and the GFT's. Rumour had it at the time that the failure rate was around 90%. I am not sure about the accuracy of that figure but it was certainly a lot higher than it is currently. We have moved towards the 100% pass rate, which just shows that the standard of these cadet courses is headed downward.
With these structured courses no longer being an accurate guide toward quality, the only other measure you have is experience. Again from what I have seen, the experienced Pilots I have flown with have all been of acceptable quality, this statement does not apply to ALL low
houred cadets.
However articulate you are at disparaging experience, in reality on the ground it does not make any sense. Good business sense though, I do understand.
Don't compare Europe to the U.S., the U.S. has it's own problems and it is not apples for apples.