Originally Posted by
WHBM
Regarding the Gatwick incident. Although Frank Lorenzo's Continental was regarded as a mainstream US carrier at the time, it had a certain reputation. They had just absorbed People Express, which was a post-deregulation startup, and the 747 N605PE was still in PE livery.
I'm not sure if People's ops and Continental ops had been merged a year later but the 747 was operating under a Continental callsign as the AAIB report states.
Both People and Continental had some young senior captains at the time. People started up in 1981 and low time copilots in the early classes found themselves rapidly moving up as the airline expanded. Continental had an ALPA strike in 1983 and anybody willing to cross the picket line got a good number (and a bad place on the published 'list' of replacement pilots). A colleague of mine years ago got hired by Continental in his late 20's and made captain in two years.
Years later circa 2001 ALPA offered the Continental pilots with 'unfortunate dates of hire' amnesty and accepted them as dues paying members. Some now refer to themselves as 'former s**bs'.