I guess I am tiring of this already...
OK What Limits...
Thanks for reading PA News regularly you are not alone. And I guess your failure to see anything good within its pages about the MD900 is not because it does not exist, more that it is pretty well overwhelmed. Perhaps you can recall when there was good news about MD and the Explorer? I cannot say I can since the KLPD and Cambridge orders. Its sad but lets not let the truth get in the way of a good barney!
And I guess this is what its all about. Colin Whicher [where is he these days?] once said to me that no one else [in the journo industry] is interested in what I wrote and in particular what I wrote about the Explorer.
So five years on.... whats changed? Now everyone is writing about it... perhaps the real journos have been asleep .... along with a few others I guess. If what I wrote was crap why are we here now talking about the danger of the demise of MD and excusing the problem by blaming it on a passing journo?
Bit late waking up now!
You may recall seeing many adverts for McAlpine Helicopters but do you remember the ones for MD? PAS? PWC? FSI? BMS? An advert is an advert and provides NO special favours. I guess that is why you will not find an MD, PWC or Bell advert now!
And I think you are VERY WRONG in your memory again about your percentages on having Macs owned 49% by Eurocopter. It is a much lower figure. Which makes the earlier assertion that 'Eurocopter' advertise with PAN absolute rubbish. Macs used to advertise in PAN. FSI used to advertise in PAN. Things move on.
Journo rule #1 "Never let the truth get in the way of a good story".
In which case its down to you to point out the errors. I was brought up as a cop over 30 years so equally 'hated' journos, now I changed hats through choice the old habit of 'telling the truth, the whole truth....' is pretty difficult to duck. But there are precious few facts flowing from you. Insinuation is not truth.
I can recall the absolute furore from the 'Explorer camp' when I reported the fact that some EC135 units had released figures that they were experiencing availability of 98%. Not my numbers. They were provided by the units concerned. That was a time when rumour suggested that some Explorer units were returning 74%. Around the time when Sussex were twiddling their thumbs for a month. But although I asked no-one replied to a direct question what the figure was.
Again around the same time there was a round robin E-mail making all sorts of accusations about my reporting of the unpalatable - that only died away when I suggested I had perhaps better report the public domain story about Dorset going cap-in-hand to ask the Police Authority for another £120,000 to tide them over after a shortfall in the unexpected spares fund....
At times it seems that there have been just too many bad stories to use. So [aside from on the Dorset Police web site] that stayed off the public agenda.
MD returned a 1% market share last year, so what you are saying is that they are far more important than Eurocopter - the choice of a significant WORLD majority - and that I should report only the bad bits about Eurocopter and the good bits about MD? Oh and maybe a bit about fixed wing to keep me busy?
EC has broad shoulders. There have been digs about their products, but not a murmur.
So PAN should shrink from 28 pages to just 5?
You should be a journo! Have you no shame!
'BTW, helicopters are often purchased by people who believe what they read / see/ hear in papers / tv / pprune / cereal packets.'
More fool them then. Perhaps they should spend more time in their own product research and believe less in the saleman. You know what they say about Estate Agents, car salesmen and the like.... We have choices, and if we make an errors we ought to have broad enough shoulders to carry them.
Only an opinion of course!
Phew!
PS. While I was writing this I had a very supportive phone call .... it seems not everyone in Explorer land has their head in the sand..... whats out is out ......... and about time too?
PPS. The South Yorkshire Explorer was not flying last night. That makes a month. Is that good for public safety? Enough is enough.
Last edited by PANews; 23rd Mar 2005 at 16:32.