The schools statistics are open for evaluation in regards to whitetail job positioning. And as for people you have mentioned who have failed assessments for airlines... well they failed the assessments.
I think it's important not to be naive about things. The schools are businesses. They want your cash first and foremost. If they have even the slightest hint that you are interested in them, they will capitalise and seize on that opportunity and pull out every statistic possible to convince you into signing up for their course.
As for statistics, well I don't know about anyone else, but I want to see the statistics on what percentage of whitetail cadets from the last 2 years have gotten jobs versus those who have not. Such a statistic is unavailable. Why?. You see these schools, when quoting you their statistics of employment,
they include those who have trained on airline schemes.
Allow me to explain. If there are 98 people on the BA FPP, and the school take those 98, as well as 2 whitetail graduates, so taking 100 altogether. Say then for argument's sake that those 2 whitetail guys don't get a job afterwards but the BA FPP guys flow into their jobs with BA ... the school still come along and say "98% of our graduates find employment after training". This gets said to naive kids and their parents (who are just as clueless to the whole game unfortunately) who the school are actually trying to sign up to the whitetail route.
I don't know about anyone else, but that is very cheeky in my book.
For the above explained reason, statistics mean little to me, as it's the school who put their slant/twist on them.
Of course OAA isn't going to be able to help them much with those airlines after that but you have to ask how they got there in the first place. The schools are very good at getting people interviews but often people who fail them do so in HR type areas which is in no way the fault of the school.
One mistake I think many people make is saying "I haven't gotten the airline scheme, but I'll take whitetail anyway and just pass the airline assessment at the end". From what I can see, this thought process has a flaw, cos if you think it's hard to pass an assessment before training, then what makes you so confident you will pass it after the training? Willing to bet 100k on it? The assessment actually is harder after training (your 100k lies on you passing that interview, not just a £250 assessment fee), and if your grades aren't 85% above, well the big orange employer will not even look at your CV unless they are desperately short, (that's before you even talk about how fierce the competition gets for every slight chance at a job). That's the biggest hope gone, and Ryanair are not exactly desperate ... it is a lot easier to blow those 2 chances than you think. Then you really are at the school's mercy ... and that is not a fun place to be, and you very quickly look back at your young naive self and how naive you were to have taken it all in.
That's not scaremongering by any means, it has happened to more than a few people.
And as for the aviation industry being predictable, I don't know but not the one I'm in. In fact just recently I asked our director of flight ops about whether the airline I currently work for plan to open another cadet scheme, his answer? "In aviation we don't even know what can happen 2 weeks down the line ... it's not been decided yet". You will find anyone in the industry will tell you something similar, it is not Pprune nonsense.