Alex, as mentioned and I suspect you would know better than me; the old CAA route had a 700 hour requirement; that seemed to work well enough; though GA is shrinking is this country it is still vibrant enough to support a 700 hour requirement. I think the benefits of the re-introduction are evident. Also as Push Button mentioned if people don't want to instruct you could still fly the hours in some LAA tail-dragger over four years or so for the same price as a type rating.
Poose, no offence taken, discussions are about presenting the alternate argument; I have little desire to fly for an airline again, my career is taking a much more interesting direction. I am currently occupied by a role associated with managing the air-worthiness of an entire fleet of biz jets (trying to vague to retain anonymity).
That said I do want those that are flying in the airlines to have the background and experience that Towerdog and Button Push Ignored have shown.
I don't like the way the airline industry is moving, at least in the last 10 years the twin star to A320 brigade were flying with Captains from the Towerdog and Push Button Ignored generation. So at least there is a degree of experience transfer. But now we are seeing a point where the twin star generation are getting promoted to Captain; subsequently the twin-star generation are now training the twin star generation.
So even worse there will be the twin-star generation Captain flying with an FO from the MPL route; so two experts Airbus operators who will have little in the way of actual raw flying experience.
The FAA have addressed the issue with the 1500 rule; I would advocate a 700 rule for Europe.
While the original poster had good intentions to show you can achieve something from nothing; to me it highlights all the aspects that are wrong with the current system.
A few years back I didn't object to the SSTR route, and people will find past posts of mine where I said it was justified as it by-passed the low pay of instructing and turbo-prop flying. Since the Air France incident I have changed my mind on this, I believe everyone should get a good GA grounding first.