I can't believe some of this pompous horse manure I'm reading here. The US majors hire just about all their guys from turboprop / RJ / ex mil / bizjet backgrounds. Same with a few other dodgy amateur operators like Cathay, Qantas, Virgin
Quite true, however I think you'll find that the U.S. Majors then put these guys onto either the same type they have flow or onto 737/320 and that the legacy carriers you mention hire them as second officers!
Also, it's never been easier these days for a kid to go buy a job and a couple thousand hours with a crappy third world 737/A320 operator, and not learn a bloody thing in that time except how to be a lazy useless SOP cowboy. And I would argue it's much much easier to get away with being lazy and useless in a modern jet as opposed to a turboprop, because 99% of the time the systems on the jet will save you from your own stupidity.
I think you'll find there are plenty of kids buying jobs in crabby third world turboprop operators, but by your argument turboprop guys
jet guys
As for your statement that 99% of the time the system will save us, perhaps a look at the last few hull losses you discover the system did nothing but confuse the crews!
If a guy is still alive and incident free after a few years of turboprop command, then you can at least have some confidence that he knows how to do things like land in a max crosswind, execute a go round at minimums, correctly identify icing conditions and so on. There are plenty of narrowbody jet F/O's out there who still struggle with that stuff believe me.
All valid points, and no one will say that it can't be done because it can and has been done in the past, the problem I believe is summed up nicely by golfish above.
This argument has bounced around the airline industry for years, but it has to be said emirates operation is like no other and at the moment it and the crews are being pushed to there limits, this sh&t has got serious!