Originally Posted by cloudjumper
It has been proven to work. The 250 hour guy (in a factual example) does just as well and in some cases better in the airlines' training program and durring IOE than his 1500 hour compatriots.
250 PFTs likely do have an easier time in the sim, because they have already been trained on it. But the sim is a very narrow video game that covers single engine ops and instrument approaches down to minimums (which are much easier than visual approaches).
Low-timers almost invariably struggle in IOE due to lack of real experience. Line flying is almost completely different than the sim...you have to do visual approaches and descents and deal with other traffic and human idosyncrasies in pilots and ATC.