I've enjoyed reading through this thread, reminiscent of the quality of discussion that used to prevail on prune 15 years ago.
There's little I can add to all that has been posted already, suffice to say that the singular root cause of all this is that there are simply too many fresh new professional license holders every year. Its like musical chairs, except they are adding bodies instead of removing seats! Until numbers are artificially restricted to match the positions available then nothing will ever change in terms of T&C's. But no organisation can do that, the regulators are only interested in operational safety and quite rightly so and all the others involved (airlines, FTO's etc) have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. Pandora's box was well and truly opened in the UK/Europe with the start of JAR (although I was no fan of the then antiquated mindset of the CAA) and the situation is now like toothpaste; its damn near impossible to get it back in the tube. It will be interesting to see what happens when MPL becomes the norm.
Last edited by Private jet; 11th Feb 2015 at 17:02.