You have to read Andy O'Shea's statement as "50% are fundamentally unemployable
by Ryanair's standards" and there is no doubt that employment standards vary across the industry. Anyone who has ever seen Ryanair's training system in operation is likely to agree, however, that they are very good. They are not alone in that, but their support and attention to detail are impressive.
His point and mine would be that piloting is one of the few professions where you can gain the base qualification without any effective filtering. In the days where no attention was paid to CRM many pilots were hired that were completely unsuitable for working in a multi-crew cockpit by modern standards, the classic example would be the flight crew of the KLM aircraft in the Tenerife disaster, but many many lesser examples exist who haven't killed anybody yet. Ryanair and most modern airlines train to the ICAO competencies which are listed on page 65 and 66 of
this IATA document. There are seven:
*Application of procedures
*Communication
*Aircraft flight path management - automatic
*Aircraft flight path management - manual
*Leadership and teamwork
*Problem solving and decision making
*Situation awareness
*Workload management
The fact that you hold a licence only directly relates to one of these, Aircraft flight path management - manual. Deficiencies in any of the other areas make you less likely to be hired. Button Push is correct in a way, many people already have these qualities, acquired in early life or in previous employment, but many do not, hence the high fail rate.
To some extent these competencies can be trained, and this is where the benefit of a good course at an ATO that understands these things kicks in. There is an evident problem, though, and that is that it costs considerably less to just train Bloggs to pass the flight test and, there being no economic incentive for flight schools to train properly, most do not.
I don't think that Bartolini would claim to do more than supply the CPL\IR training to a high standard and a reasonable cost. To the best of my knowledge they have no pre-selection and like most others do not train to the full set of competencies, they will train you well to get through the test. FTE and DFAS would have to be seen in the same light, high quality ATOs doing a job. Of course you can go elsewhere, there are ATOs that are rubbish, they won't schedule your training properly, the instructors don't care, there's a lack of lack of standardisation, poor maintenance standards, easy flight tests because of poor local examiners/lack of interest from the regulatory Authority, etc., etc.. The thing is that the poor ATOs are not measurably cheaper. If they were you could perhaps tolerate the poor service. I think the recommendations for CPL/IR ATOs have to be seen in that light, will they do the job you are paying them for, and do it well?