I want to make it clear I agree with you on eroding Ts and Cs, and believe you in me I am not happy about it. But do I have any other choice? The answer is unfortunately not really. I'm not blaming or seeking to point fingers. However what I am saying is it annoys me when we all get looked down on as people ruining the profession by paying to train when this is something that is now the norm because people well before our time allowed it to become so.
I would love to take the moral high ground, reject the offer to fly an orange bus and let them pay for my training ... but the reality is they will not care ... not when they had over 5000 applications. That's 4999 other people more than willing to give their cash. Quite simply if I don't pay, well there is no shortage of people who will. It won't achieve an awful lot and I'll just be wasting time. And one thing you may notice, is the large application numbers, for a scheme costing £100,500. It is actually very competitive. So we are still quite some numbers away from being in any sort of a position to take that moral ground. They are by no means short of people willing to pay.
so I ask again, what do you think they should have done to stop it if the present generation are willing to throw their money at the airlines and sign up for blatantly illegal and immoral contracts?
This is the thing, it did not start with the present generation. The reason the present generation are in this situation of having to pay is because it is what has been the case for a few years now ... it was set by those before us, our fate was sealed. To answer your question, most pilots I come across tend to not really care about the training side of things once they've made it where they want to be (not that they're wrong in doing that) ... maybe if pilots were more vocal in their airlines about charging for TRs the airline would have stopped ... cos they certainly won't listen to applicants.