Of course, the qualitative differences are noted, but the economics aren't there at the volume of hires 121 demands currently. The time builders don't pay enough to incentivize the applicants to eat that training cost subsidy to the airline, like prior hiring environments (pre-lost decade) perhaps could. At least the regionals fixed the pay for bad schedules, alas they aren't hiring FOs. But bad schedules and bad pay (inflation adjusted 2023 cost of living environment)? Yeah that's a hard pass, and right back to lost decade lack of interest in the profession, which is how we ended up in present circumstances in the first place on the labor supply side. Single pilot work is hazardous work, and should pay more, not less, even if it's stipulated as higher turnover work filled with the lower experienced. It's a catch-22, the revenue to pay pilots competitive wages exists in big bus pax carriage, not ancillary freight or small fry unsked.

Ab initio is disliked by 121 merely because of course it shifts the cost to them. Nothing new there. And though I do agree with the generic notion that MPL in Europe is carnage waiting to happen, the reality is that they aren't really far behind our safety record per capita. Which is to say, as much as I'd like to thump my chest and decree everyone should be able to pass military UPT just to monitor self-flying buses in the sky (sorry not sorry), I don't think capital punishment in a caravan/PC12/metro should be the price to pay for inexperience just because the airline doesn't want to eat ab initio training cost.

No buck, No Buck Rogers. Moral appeals to some protestant work ethic are ineffectual and frankly insulting.