Reading a GIA thread is like looking at a bottle of Jack Daniels at 10 in the morning. Your judgement says not to partake, but lo and behold, you find yourself unscrewing the cap.
There are two seperate arguments here that have somehow managed to inbreed over the course of time. One is that GIA F.O.s are low-time pilots and that inherently makes them unqualified to do their jobs, followed by the counter-argument of the military, etc. While experience is immeasurably valuable, there are 5-figure TT pilots out there who shouldn't so much as operate a tug, while I have seen 3-figure folks that proceed through airline training with little difficulty. In and of itself, TT is not a suitable factor for judging a pilot's abilities. The military compensates for experience with high-quality, highly focused training in the initial stages. If GIA or other carriers took pilots and, from the get-go, trained them intensively to be airline pilots, including aerobatics for stick and rudder skills, intensive high-density-airspace IFR work with variable weather scenarios, and CRM -- you'd have some pretty competent and safe 500 hour FOs out there who could then simultaneoulsy provide for a safe cockpit while being mentored for ultimately inheriting their fourth stripe and responsibility for the aircraft and all of its contents. I don't know whether GIA or any other airline does this, but that would make the arguments about the "500-hour FO" an entirely different animal. That being said, a 500-hour pilot with poor-to-mediocre initial primary and IFR training who has gone on to perfect their mediocrity (or pass it on to others) in their first flying job, or on their own, is unlikely to be a valuable crewmember no matter how much training the airline itself gives them. It ain't so much the hours -- but rather how they got them.
The other argument deals with the ethics of the financing involved. That an airline charges 5-figures for the privilege of making a similar annual salary as an FO is unethical - no question about it. Counter-arguments often tend towards the selfish ("If you had the opportunity, you'd do it"), as though that would be a similarly appropriate response to cheating on your tax return with impunity as well, and the CFO response ("It makes good business sense -- they do it because they can"). Well, so does charging $10 for a gallon of water after a hurricane blows through and there's no electricity or water. Again, just because it "makes business sense" and is legal doesn't mean it's an ok thing to do.
Before you pass judgement on those who took this route, however, understand that people are not born knowing the airline industry. No one takes trig, history, creative writing, and "The Dos-and-Dont's of becoming an Airline Pilot" in 11th grade. Someone that was aware of the ethics involved, and took the route anyway, certainly deserves scrutiny. Not everyone in that position has however, so denegrating all GIA FOs and the like as scourges is unnecessary.
When it comes to dealing with the PFT folks, look at it two ways:
Those who already have, we work with to fly a safe airplane.
Those who haven't yet, we educate.
End of rant.....the bottle cap is going back on.
