Back in my commuter days (in the early 90's, before they got Barbie Jets and became known as "regionals" ) the company I worked for got the bright idea to start charging new hires for "training". We were a fairly small TWA (formerly Pan Am Express) feeder in the Northeast. I was there for years before this nonsense started.
They started charging $8500 up front for training fees, and after you passed, you were offered a job. Oh, and they "gave" you a Jetstream type rating........ on you first annual PC ( a year AFTER you were hired). The year delay was there to prevent you from taking your "valuable" type rating (that you just PAID for
) and going elsewhere.
The joke was on the company when after 6 months, they furloughed a bunch of these folks, and told them to pound sand when they demanded their types. The furlough-ees got a class action suit going, and the company ended up "giving" them their types, AND as much training as they needed to get up to speed for the ride. It cost the company a bundle, and any profit from the PFT nonsense was long gone when these folks walked out with their types....
Prior to the PFT BS, our new hires typically had 2-3k hours, with a decent amount of multi and many were ex military. Afterwards, that went down to 3-500 hours TT, often with very little multi time.
Like any group of folks, some were fine, some were not so fine and some were outright horrific. Most figured it out in a few months and a year in, they were as competent as anyone else. Those were some tough months for us line Captains, who were basically flight instructing. We were, for all intents and purposes, doing extended IOE, without the requisite Check Airman creds or pay..
Of course, the junior airplane was the J-3100, which was, by far, the most
unstable IFR platform I've ever flown, and was a real handful for a novice pilot. Flying it IFR was like trying to read a newspaper while standing on a bowling ball. It was a great airplane to be flying when you had to do a interview sim rides (not that there were many of those in the early 90's, as NOBODY was hiring!) in anything else. I was never a sharper stick and rudder guy than when I was flying that thing. After 1500 hours in the Jetstream, when I transitioned to the ATR, during the first sim period, I thought that the motion was off in the sim.
With most of the PFT folks, it became a single pilot operation during their first few months in the J-31. I believe in letting new folks make (and learn from) their own mistakes, but sometimes it got so tiring trying to keep up with some of them that it was less work to just fly most of the legs myself when the weather went south.
In a nutshell, instead of getting the best qualified pilots for the job, we got barely qualified pilots with $8500 to burn.
Several of my friends were perfect candidates, needed jobs, and would've breezed through new hire training, but wouldn't, (rightfully, IMHO) pay the $8500.