Dear banana...
I am a long haul heavy wide body (bla bla bla ) pilot . I talk from things I saw and experienced already . I give some examples of major EU airlines who hires a lot of TP guys ( cargolux - AF - aerologic -lufthansa cargo ......) if you start on the wide body the new things are ETOPS ( 2 sectors ) , calling some countries 10 min before , escape routes over N644 , understand the indians and the chinese on ATC ... And some other stuff but its not challenging when you do it for 1 year . The example of AF crash is mainly related to flying skills . I think when you start the long haul ops you need a good backgroung on manual flight because what you mainly do on the long range is checking preparing and ATC. You do 2 or 3 landings a month with AT on ( mandatory in some airlines) .
And btw the ryan guys fly also only in europe ( mainly).
Gn8.