Hammock: In my opinion the training is both stressful and tough and add to that; very long. It goes for 5 to 8 months and you need to meet standards at every stage, it is by no means a formality. I imagine that training is now more streamlined than it was as alloha appears to be more up to date than me and his view is that the failure rate is now less than 50%. Even so I doubt that many more than 50% who start today will still be in Saudia on the 1st September 2016.
With some airlines if you enter as a direct entry Captain then it is a formality, that is definately not the case with Saudia.