Kaptain M wrote:
However, if pilots were provided with the EXACT Q&A's and told that "these are what you WILL be getting", then that IS cheating.
Correct. That's the way it happened during years. Manfred Brennwald changed the Q&A only once in the course of years, as reported by the NZZ.
An interesting point I forgot to mention before, is that, according to the Swiss Federal Bureau of Civil Aviation (BAZL/OFAC), the licences obtained under such conditions may well be cancelled. Knowing the close links and shared personal between the BAZL/OFAC and Swissair, no one should wonder why it never actively investigated this wrongdoing.
Pointing at the Bassedorf crash as an explanation for the NZZ report seems to me irrelevant. The Bassedorf crash report pointed at a number of management short-comings (see the related thread on pprune) under the era of Moritz Suter that have little, if anything, to do with a general assement of former Crossair Pilot's qualifications.
The fact is that the Bassedorf report has been exploited by a fringe of former Swissair pilots, now flying for Swiss, in an attempt to oust the Swiss CEO André Dosé, who, by the time the crash happened, was Crossair Chief Pilot. This attemps went as far as leaking to a yellow paper, the SonntagsBlick (let's say a sister publication of The Mirror while the NZZ stands closer to The Times) a collection of incidents and rumors gathered more than two years ago by the Swiss Lawyer Francois Bernath and presented a couple of week ago to the readers as a "secret report"! Bernath had no means of investigation and no authority for his undertaking but the support of the Aeropers, the Swissair Pilots Association...
Interestingly, Manfred Brennwald is now obviously trying to cover his axx - sorry, I mean "bottom" - in releasing on pprune a letter intended to the NZZ. I'm wondering what the Swiss management will think of this kind of "communication" to the public...
Manfred Brennwald, Swiss COO, wrote:
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.
The fact is that the students were provided with the Q&A (and the answers) ahead of the examination. Talking about "crap", I would rather refer to the above quote as to the NZZ report.
Another fact is that Swissair pilots who came under scrutiny for security infringments in course of their duty could and did use their exams results to soften the stand of security officials. In other words, they did not only cheated at the exam, but on repeated occasions.