Australia's safety regulation has enough checks and balances to ensure that nobody I fly with is going to fall out of the sky
Gotta agree with you there,
Binos - I think
Ralph's rant, where he states"
Historically, airline recruitment focused on employing individuals who could enhance the saftey culture" was off the mark....it has been the regulatory bodies in the main, who have whipped the airlines into shape, along with the aircraft manufacturers.
IMO, the airline companies will do the MINIMUM they are
required to do (read spend $$$'s) to comply with the safety rules imposed upon them.
Air crew recruited were basically, for pilots - the most experienced for age, with a reliable employment history, whom they believed (through interviews and tests) would fit in with the 2/3 crew concept.
And for the F/A's - the most presentable, who could represent the company hundreds of times per hour per day, endure physically demanding work (walking kilometres in an O2 reduced environment), and prove once every 13 months that they could execute the necessary minimum safety knowledge.
Okay, that's the abbreviated version, but nonetheless the "guts" of it!!
Yes, I find the DJ cabin crew schtick embarrassing,
So why is it that YOU find it embarassing,
Binos? Do you mean you feel embarassed for them - or are you embarassed, as an Australian, to think that other nationalities might consider this is how ALL of Australia's airlines carry on?
Personally, I believe it's a little bit of the "Olde Country" conservatism coming out in you (which surprises me
), and is evident in many Australians....a "shyness" perhaps, rather than the extrovert, rah rah type behaviour we associate with Americans (for example).
Yet a common quip from Brits visiting Oz (and even from Kiwis) is how much more like the USA, Australia and Australians are, than the U.K.
Ralph's rant again highlights the "conservativeness" in the Australian psyche when he wrote,"
He then invited the lucky pasenger to participate in the safety demo, which derided the whole safety point of the excercise."
Even from my Oz perspective, but as a pilot interested in promoting Safety,
I personally believe that this was a very POSITIVE action the F/A took, in
involving the pax in a very important safety issue.
Good on him
So is it possible that
VB are pushing us further down the (extroverted) American road
vs the (conservative) British one?
Are we being forced out, from underneath our rock?
It's amazing how uninhibited a little bit of alcohol can make us (or give us an excuse to let our hair down a bit), isn't it?
And just as we can become the serious conservative again, once the party is over, I'll BET the
VB crew have a personality that will
DEMAND you follow their orders in any
non-normal situation!