The Chief Operating Officer of this company, Manfred Brennwald, confirmed the report of the Neue Zuercher Zeitung
Well not quite. Here is the letter that Manfred Brennwald sent to the author of the article:
Hello Mrs. Voigt,
I refer to your article in the today's edition of "NZZ am Sonntag" with the title you have chosen to say "
Prüfungsbetrug von Swissair-Piloten". At the same time I need to recall our yesterday's telephone call where I tried to explain the real circumstances at length to you.
What you finally made out of your article is a form of journalism, which I am not used by the usual quality of an "NZZ". The motives behind will most probably remain to be your secret.
By expressing statements like " Instruktoren und Schulleitung schauten weg", "Der theoretische
Prüfungsteil wurde als Alibiübung für die Behörden aufgefasst." you clearly imply that the former SLS did not take academic test for serious or even acted unlawful.
This, as well as your statement " Den lockeren Umgang mit den theoretischen
Prüfungen streitet auch Manfred Brennwald nicht ab" are presumptions, which in no way whatsoever have been indicated by me implicitly nor explicitly and therefore I cannot let them stay unanswered.
In contrary, at the SLS we drove a very strict regime when we took academic tests. All tests were supervised by an expert in front of the class during the whole time and in addition there were periodic inspections by the Federal Office of Civil Aviation. Cheating was in no way tolerated and when our supervisor every once in a while did catch someone using a "spick", this person - of course - had to repeat the test.
My explanations to you in our telephone call yesterday were meant to explain that it is for obvious reasons common to all schools that their students ask predecessors, which already completed the respective tests about possible questions in order to enhance their preparation. It is also self-explaining that students talk amongst each other about the tests they are facing, the amount of difficult questions and their best answers. If you have ever made an academic test for your personal drivers license, I am quite sure that you consulted the even public valuable questionnaires with all questions and answers in order to prepare yourself for the test.
I regret that with your article you drove one more cotter between the two pilot's corps ex Crossair and Swissair. Over and above you contribute to a damaging image effect for SWISS' reputation and last not least I am still puzzled about the journalistic stile. I remain to hope that this is not the new standard which stands for the NZZ.
Kind regards,
Manfred Brennwald
It is quite obvious that we are talking here about a very bad piece of journalism and while Mr. Brennwald doesn't want to speculate about the motives of this journalistic piece of crap, I get the feeling that somebody wants to divert from the ongoing discussion about Crossairs safety culture triggered by the recently published Bassersdorf accident report. The motto seems to be: "If I cannot make myself any better, I can try to make all the others worse and the I will be better in relation to them." Sadly this harms our whole profession. Furthermore I can only strongly agree with what Kaptin M wrote.