I'm interested if any of you back in the day were handed a place on a cadet course leading to employment with BA, would you have rejected on moral principle and out of respect to those who were applying via direct entry? I think not ... I look through historical posts through some people in this thread and find a couple from earlier days regarding flight training, the likes of CTC/OAA et al being discussed etc etc ... yet now integrated schools producing cadets are the dark enemy?
Cadet programmes have been on for yonks and as far as I'm aware there is no correlation between them and aircraft crashing ... we don't want FAA 1500hr madness in Europe either so things are fine as they are.
Just to add, the FPP could not have exactly been cheap for BA. They paid the cadets in the region of £45,000+ flying pay, in addition to repaying them £84,000 training costs in the form of £12,000 a year. I'm not sure exactly on the numbers and how it all compares to a DE FO's salary, but unless they start DE guys on something like £65,000/annum it is hard to see how they have really made many savings? Probably some, but surely not enough to make any sort of a dent in the books.