To MP and Mrs Pete. .. .A truly dreadful situation and like everyone else here I wish you every success in your retirement. You have clearly generated great respect from many of your colleagues, and I would be honoured if when I retire people felt the same about me.. .. .There is a saying that 'what goes around comes around' and I think there is an element of truth in it. Time will tell in this case. . .. .One of the difficulties of this situation is that some really good women pilots can be tarred with the same brush as the lady you have described. We have some great ones in our company who are highly respected by managers and peers alike. . .. .When I was in the RAF some years ago there was a great desire to get the first women selected for aircrew training through to the front line at any cost. Consequently, some very poor specimens got through training who, if they had been male, would never have made it in a million years. The view then prevailed for some time that all women in aviation were a joke. Eventually some degree of sanity prevailed and proper equality was applied. As the training system started to pass and fail women on demonstrated ability just like their male counterparts, the attitude to the women who got through changed significantly. Everyone recognised that they were there on ability and nothing else. There are lessons from that painful period of RAF history for everyone in aviation. It is simply counterproductive to artificially enhance the prospects of minorities (women, blacks, whoever) in top jobs when their abilities clearly do not justify their employment. Everyone can see through it, and they all end up despising the complete lack of integrity associated with such practices, however well intended. The genuine desire to bring equality ends up producing the very resentment the powers-at-be were trying to eradicate. Like I said at the beginning, there are so many fantastic women pilots about, and any manager who hangs onto a duff one because of their sex is actually doing untold damage to the cause of equality.