Coconut, beejesus, stop peddling this tosh.
A Captain is put in to a position of responsibility. He is put in there because he is expected to use his judgement and knowledge of the rules to ensure that he and the crew operate the aircraft in a safe manner. When unexpected things happen, he is expected to call on his experience and good judgement to uphold that safe operation. He is expected to make hard decisions, things which might inconvenience himself, the crew and the passengers, but nevertheless will ensure the safety of all on board. It's what he's paid to do, and what he's morally obliged to do. Any Captain not willing to do so can easilly slip back to being an FO and take the relatively easy life.
I spent half an hour talking to a brother of a senior pilot recently, yes the one in the 'cabin crew in loo incident', and while I'm fully aware that what the pilot did was technically incorrect, I couldn't help feel the whole way FR is run contributed to the incident.
Rubbish. The company were not aware of this incident till after it had occurred. The Captain did not to my knowledge seek management approval to break the rules. No one from Ops was holding his arm up his back forcing him to break the rules. What he did was more than technically incorrect, he allowed a flight to knowingly operate in an illegal configuration. Good intention and trying to help someone out does not excuse that. His Captains experience and judgement should have allowed him to step back from the situation, assess it rationally, and then make the tough decision to offload them. End of story.
Here is an airline who can't even supply seats to its positioning crews
If you are talking about the two people in the toilets in this incident, then they were not positioning. They were staff off duty on holiday. The fact that they did not make ample provision to get back home in time to recommence duty is not Ryanair or MOL's problem. It is theirs and theirs alone.
once fired a chief pilot for booting off a pax when he needed his crew to position to Stansted I think
Presumably said Captain went to an industrial tribunal if he was operating within the company rules ??
Of course the fact that this pilot was causing waves in the company may have had something to do with it.
Even more reason to go public then if this was the case .....
The conversation I had with the pilots brother was deeply disturbing & pointed more to the real villian of the piece being MOL because the way the company is run set itself up for an incident like this to happen.
O'Leary was not there, he wasn't the guy on the spot charged with the responsibility for the safe conduct of the flight, he hasn't written anything in the Ops Manual to say that breaking the rules is OK and that the company insist on it (as long as you don't get caught). In spite of your blind faith in your friend, he was the only one to blame for allowing himself to make the final decision. He had the power and the authority. He had the years of experience to make the judgement call. He made the mistake, it wasn't forced on him. Coconuts, you have to try and seperate in your mind the emotional views you have of your friend (can do no wrong, great guy, etc) from the professional expectations that the airline, the crew, and the passengers had of him. He failed to meet them. As humans are want to do.
The further insights I got into the running of the company were no near pleasant. MOL has everyone in the companys backs up, not a great safety ethos, a load of angry, p*ssed off staff ferrying us around in the skies.
You can talk some sense then ?? His ethos and character are despised globally. But till he has a big fall, he won't care and will continue to stand and crap on all those below him or against him.