I'm sorry, but I call BS on what you are implying here.
First, post 9/11, most European airlines killed off their Ab-Initio programmes.
Therefore for most European airlines, the only route to getting a seat in the pointy end is the so-called "Direct Entry" route. This either requires pre-existing civilian qualifications and experience (i.e. unfrozen ATPL with real-life hours in the bag), or otherwise being ex-military with equivalent qualifications and experience in that world.
For the few airlines that do offer Ab-Initio, then I'm afraid it's complete BS if you think ab-initio trainees for any European airline just get dumped in a simulator and trained how to follow the magenta line. They will follow the same route as anyone else, i.e. they will be sent off to the US or Australia (because of the consistent weather, not anything else) and will work their way through the usual route SEP -> MEP -> Hours building .... they will then come back to Europe and finish off by getting an EU license. Only once they've got their commercial qualifications and have built experience will they then start Line Training which is where things like MCC come in, and that's where sim time starts coming in.
Simulators are expensive to run, even more expensive to buy, and there are not many of them around. They typically run 24x7 and are used for refreshers for existing crew as well as training new ones. To think there's enough spare capacity floating around to train green newbies from zero is a pipe dream.
Finally, on a practical note the newbie in the right seat will always be paired with a more experienced captain in the left seat. You will never find two noobs up front.
I don't know about France (but Europe tends to be aligned), but a basic commercial license in the UK requires 200 hours of flying experience. On top of that you would need a multi-crew rating, an instrument rating a multi-engine rating and a type rating on the plane you are going to fly. Enough to recognise that pushing the yoke left makes the plane bank left.
My brother wanted to be a pilot and was looking at moving to the US because it is cheaper and has more consistent weather. He also told me the licences were easier to get than in Europe. I think you have fallen into the 'US is best trap'
He has, and yes European licenses are tougher.
AFAIK, a typical path for a pilot in the US is to start taking lessons in a small plane, then, after getting the private license, make money flying, typically as a flight instructor, in order to pay for flight hours in bigger planes. The result is a lot of flight hours as a pilot in command. Hours as a flight instructor are particularly important because you have to cover for your student mistakes.
In countries with a weaker aviation culture future pilots tend to go to flight schools where they do the required number of hours and pass the tests but nothing more. There is simply not enough demand for general aviation flight instructors. The number of flight hours may be significant and the tests hard, but they fly mostly as students, not as pilots in command. So while they may know the technique and procedures, they lack the experience of being in charge of the plane.
I'd say that France is not the worst in that regard, we have many "aeroclubs", but not as good as the US.
In the US you can't become a flight instructor with a private pilots licence. You have to pass your commercial licence first. Just like in Europe.
You have to do at least 100 of your hours as pilot in command in the UK to get your commercial license. You will have to finish that before you can be an instructor. You can't make money from flying until you have finished your commercial licence.
To be an airline pilot you will need to have flown 1500hours in Europe or the US. Nobody gets there because of culture, they get there by flying 1500 hours
The US has better flying weather so you can build his more quickly, is cheaper and because there are more trainees there are more opportunities to build hours at someone else's expense. But cheaper does not mean better.
It’s bullshit, of course. The archetype, if it ever existed, has been in decline since 1945 at the latest. Within that time, miles traveled have increased 15-fold, accidents have been reduced by 95 % (for a combined risk reduction of factor 300) while costs have come down by 80 %.
The adrenaline junkie will get bored and kill everyone with carelessness or controlled-flight-into-terrain. Because the total number of exciting situation in your 30 year career is, to a near approximation, zero. A good pilot today is a bureaucrat, meticulously running through checklists day after day.
There was at some point a philosophical split between Airbus and Boeing, the former going for fly-by-wire including automatic modification of pilot inputs etc., while Boeing was culturally invested that archetype of a pilot and preferring more direct controls. The outcome: no discernible difference in the safety records of these supposedly different approaches. Pilots from very different backgrounds? No difference. What matters for safety isn’t character, it’s process. And that’s great because processes scale, natural-born aviators don’t.
I wonder if this is sustainable. The era of affordable general aviation aircraft is over, people are flying 50 year old planes because the new basic cessnas costs $400K each.
It'll be fine regardless, there'll be no shortage in the military -> commercial pilot funnel of the most militarized country in the world.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/units-flying-f-15c-ds-...
https://www.airforcemag.com/article/2021-usaf-ussf-almanac-e...
Granted, this is transparently an attempt to recover some remnant of a meaningful argument from the wreckage of the one I was trying to make, but it might still be interesting for someone more familiar than I with where to find the relevant data.
https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2018/03/01...
Whether or not I fully buy the argument, I don't suppose I know. I do know that a lifetime of reading, study, and home simulation taken together taught me less about what an airplane does when it's flying than did one fifteen-minute discovery flight in a Piper Archer. It's different for professionals than for an aviation-nerd amateur, of course. But I see no reason in principle to assume there aren't things you only really learn from spending enough time flying a plane too small and simple to lie to you, and every reason from experience to assume that there are.
(Having just seen your edit, I'm no longer sure this qualifies as a response on point, but I'm going to let it stand and finish my supper.)
Little, because you don't have to own a plane to fly it; the commercial pilot funnel comes through private flight schools and military aviation (over time shifting from the former from the latter), not mainly from I-bought-a-plane-with-cash non-commercial private pilots.
Not that this is me - if nothing else, you probably can't get my mom into an aircraft even at gunpoint - but it is more like the question that wants to be considered here.
Who attends those private flight schools? Unaffordable aircraft obviously won't improve things and seem quite likely to make things worse.
If I recall correctly, Patrick "Ask the Pilot" Smith has had some things to say based on his own experience here. In any case, whether or not that model is actively used today, I would be entirely unsurprised to see it spread widely in the next couple of decades, and maybe not only in the airline industry.
At some point the pilot shortage might get severe enough that airlines have to hire pilot trainees with little or no experience and then pay them to go through a training program. So far that hasn't been necessary but it's a common model in other countries.
I suppose the larger discussion is properly around the vast increase in income inequality over recent decades, and I'd have done well to contextualize it there before now.
(In my defense, I've had such a day that the early root canal appointment, which played out like something from Marathon Man - not that my dentist is less than excellent, but I'm glad I already knew that because we had about half an hour there during which the least surprising thing in the world would have been for him to ask me "is it safe?" - that was the second most significant thing to happen since the sun last rose. So it's quite possible I am bringing less than my best to this discussion that I'm using to help me wind down toward sleep.)
Why?
This wasn't always the case though. There's a chapter in the book Where is My Flying Car? that explains how this was a result of the early 70s explosion of product liability regulations + a FAA that was and continues to be completely apathetic to general aviation
Why do you believe so? Honest question.