I'm just a time-expired CPL so really shouldn't be here but I do find this subject very depressing. My wife once was returning to the UK and requested a FD visit. The crew were ex-RAF and she shamelessly did some name-dropping to be invited to stay in the jump seat for a night landing into Gatwick. More than 30 years later she still counts this as one of the most interesting and exciting things she has done and remains profoundly grateful for having been allowed this experience.
I wonder how many similar opportunities which innocently might be enjoyed by others are denied them by the dead hand of a craven bureaucracy stifled by a political correctness which contrives to make our present world a bland and thoroughly over-regulated place. I'm glad I'm not any younger and particularly glad that I do not have to work in the present aviation culture.
But then I'm an old man from a very different era - not many of us with a Miles Gemini in the log left! . . . .
