I think the question here is of keeping the career as a career. The current situation is a road that will dwindle into a track. It's getting to a point that whatever company you head for as a cadet, that's your lot as once you become experienced you won't be able to move as companies take only cadets. Sure, at the min there is still small amounts of experienced recruitment but you have to bare in mind how much the recruitment situation has changed in 10 years. It's not beyond the wit of man that it will be cadet only per company in the not to distant. Regulators think its safe, employers love the cheapness and the fact you can start a cadet on 25k.
As a discussion of safety, whilst incap events in Europe for a straight out of training and line checked 250 hour guy can be assisted by ATC, it's another thing if it happens on a wide body heading to Africa at night, middle of Siberia or over the Indian Ocean on poor HF and no cpdlc com. I do think there is a case for international ops over sparce areas or dodgy parts to require a mix of quality airline hours and a strong training background.
A CTC guy out of line training has had what, a brief 40 hour rating and LST on top of basic training. We all know you only get to do things briefly on type ratings. Maybe incap was covered once or twice, briefly on rto, 80kts and perhaps a line flight scenario on a short UK sector in the sim As for safety pilot for weeks, ha, well I've seen it for more like 2-3 days of line flying. The basic training on the twin is all IFR procedures, not really actual airline style , more light aircraft things -vac pump failures, radios blinking a bit and OEI approaches. An experienced line pilot WITH a good training background has in say 10 years of flying, additionally been exposed to say 20-30 recurrents and all the experience of picking things up and advice up along the way and has seen a lot of real stuff happen. That's when it's time to set sail over remote lands to crap holes in the middle of the night.
Last edited by Cliff Secord; 3rd Nov 2014 at 15:52.