cessanpuppy;
Begging your pardon....either you're not being very clear in your writing or I am being obtuse, (not the first time), and I would very much like to understand your post. I am interpreting your remarks to mean that even in present circumstances, pilots are working longer, (greater production) and supplementing income by working a second job, (I did, as a young S/O in the early '70's), that duty day regs are liberal to permit more money to be earned, etc etc?
If that's what you're saying, I agree with you. Production pressures for wage earners are enormous and not only in this industry and yes, that has a great deal to say about present safety priorities and possibly about causes. Colgan is emerging as an example of this.
The issue however, is within an overarching approach to how the airline business is being run, the larger factors being, to nutshell it I suppose, "poor pay and lousy prospects are not attracting the best and brightest." As such, there is no direct link between poor pay and a specific rise in incident rates. While some industrial psychologists might state that poor pay demotivates people and while it might be trivially true, it is not a huge factor in aviation safety, mainly because sloth and incompetence can kill oneself. Fatigue will kill with far more frequency and direct connectedness than poor pay will.
What poor pay, lousy conditions and poorer prospects will do is "dis-arm" one, distract one, produce a lack of engagement or inhere a mild "malaise" within one which can have the same results. I doubt very much whether F/O Shaw was "demotivated" but she may have been "disarmed" and focussing on other matters which may be collaterally associated with poor pay, terrible working conditions, training issues and so on. In that sense, I think such a point is well worth attending to.
As stated in my previous post above, I have been making the point about "poor pay not attracting the best and brightest" since the late 90's/early 2000's and here beginning in 2003 so there is no "giving ground to get along and continue the dialogue" going on. Nor do I mind being challenged on my views but I do expect responders to read what I have written first. That is what continues the dialogue, for me anyway. Being accomodating by altering views to be nice isn't what any of this is about; being respectful and mindful of "the other" is simply the way one behaves in public with others when differences emerge. Being rude only says something about oneself and does nothing to convey one's point of view.
Regarding overstating cases or responding to belligerance, (none of which I see or sense in the present discussion, btw), I am not scoring debating points here. This isn't a debate in which one "wins". I try not to exaggerate because that only weakens one case - if anything, I can state without equivocation that I have vastly underplayed what I have experienced and seen and which supports my views.
Last edited by PJ2; 1st November 2009 at 18:53.