Lingdee, the question you should be asking is not what happens to the pay to fly.
Who cares? They paid, they flew. Plenty more where they came from.
The question you should be asking is what about the SIA and Cargo guys. Admittedly they also paid to fly. $48K for a 320 type rating and one year later have all been asked to FO back to where they came from.
One guy has only been flying for 6 months. More fool them for paying for the rating in the first place.
But it makes sense in the eyes of management here. Why pay an FO $7K basic when you can take in a cadet monkey, pay him $3K AND get him to pay again another $48K for a type rating. Repeat cycle every year.
Not to mention the kickback tiger get from STAA for placing the cadets in the first place.