What a shame the thread was hijacked by nonsense. 'Items stolen by crew'! The practise of many crew on checkout to leave their door unlocked with 'Make up room' sign displayed no doubt contributed to removal of items by other guests, and indeed, possibly by staff themselves. Customs were very hot about receipts for all imported items. I would say crew were possibly actually involved with less than half the incidents attributed to them. As for very large 5' 'looking glasses'? I think not!
BALPA always watched hotel standards for pilots only. If we ended up in a poorer quality hotel, there was a reason, and most pilots were happy to abide by the decision. I pay 1% of my pay to BALPA and am happy to leave it to them and abide by their guidance- you don't buy a guard dog and run around barking yourself!
Hopefully we have put all that garbage to rest now.
So we put the Flight Deck into a very, very expensive but dreadful hotel, and the Cabin into a slightly less expensive but infinitely better one. There's a revolutionary in all of us.
The VC10 had enough of 'hijacking'. We lost 2, in AMS and Dawson's Field. Any stories there? Dawson's field was Cyril Goulbourn, a real old-school gentleman flier. His description of that hijacking and subsequent events was hair raising. I'll never forget the image of the VC10 fin destroyed in the desert.