KryptonJohn
No matter how much I wish to sympathise with your feelings about the pathways into the industry we are not doing ourselves any favours by using young bloods and flight instructors.
In the last eight years I have trained 350 pilots from 49 different countries and what I saw was on the whole pretty depressing. Whilst many could do their daily job well enough most were hopeless in the IFR environment despite having a current IR and similarly most struggled as soon as things started to go wrong.
If there is a general malaise out there then I suspect it is down to the paucity of good training both basic and advanced and to make a difference we need top class TRI's and SFI's who really know the art of 'teaching' rather than just 'course delivery'.
By allowing an affordable pathway to self-selected wannabes we are, in my opinion creating a downward spiral of standards and the current system of prof checks is doing nothing to help given it's repetitious and unambitious nature.
If we chose only the best to be the instructors of tomorrow in the same way as the major airlines then maybe we can turn this baby around - it isn't going to be quick and it isn't going to be easy. I'm for snuffing out 200 hour CFI's and forcing the industry to recruit into tailor made training programmes that deliver what the industry needs, competent aviators.
G.