Therefore it is quite normal for a 200 hour pilot to come out of flight school and straight onto flying a large commercial aircraft
It has become more normal of late, but you do not have to go that far back into the past to realise that this progression was certainly not the norm. Today it has been driven in by economics, the 200 hour cadet is cheap to employ.
We just don’t have the aviation diversity to support the kind of “career progression” you guys look forward to
Really? We did in the, not too distance, past. The reason there is less of it now is because you can by-pass it by buying your way into that jet job at Ryanair et al. The career progression route, such as instructing then to turboprops then to jets has been blocked by the likes of Ryanair, who look towards 200 hour cadets rather than more experienced pilots. The career progression route has been destroyed by the 200 hour cadets going direct to jets.
Why take on on an experienced TP pilot (or regional jet for that matter) and pay them well, when you can take on somebody with no experience but willing to pay insane amounts of money for "tagged" training? P2f and its derivatives have killed it as a progressive career in the UK.
Spot on.
Also, the JAA fATPL course is a much tougher and more regimented pilot training course compared to the US FAA or ICAO/Canada one.
Naive and a bit arrogant. Europe is a big place and certain EASA states certainly do not have the same standards of training, even though they are supposedly training to the same system. Here too there seems to be a race to the bottom.
Safety couldnt and isnt It isnt the arguement or challenge for or against p2f[sic]
Ask yourself this. Will there come a point where rich and able candidates for p2f start to run dry, especially as the airline industry continues to lose its status? And the airlines are left to choose from the rich, but less able candidates. Will they abandon p2f because the standards of applicant have decreased? Or will they choose to lower their selection standards. After all, it is a very cheap way of getting pilots, and modern jets are really really safe and are difficult to crash...aren't they????