I find that as a captain, you are made responsible for things which you can not always be responsible for. Now this is a bit off topic, and in now way removes the responsibilities of a captain to land at the correct airport, but it came to my mind because of all the people writing that the captain should take the fall.
Are you all familiar with those laws which state that the captain is ultimately responsible for this or that. It is written all over the air law and some of the things we donīt even control. As captain I am responsible to know the contents of all the AIPs of all the airports I can go to (in my airline about 700). And I donīt even have the AIPs available to me. As a captain I am responsible for signing of an airplanes technical state, which I can only check with a walk around, having not been an engineer before. As a captain I am suppose to accept the most crazy runway configurations due too noise abatement, but if something happens, they go at me because I did not request the longest runway with the most headwind. As a captain I have to maintain myself fit and rested, but they can reduce my rest to 7 and a half hours (with taxies and food that leaves 5 hours for the sack...).
I guess the best example is the long haul flight with the captain, FO and cruise relieve pilot. Who is responsible if the Captain is sleeping in his bunk and the FO and cruise relieve pilot are flying? You got it, the captain who his sound asleep is responsible according to law for everything that happens at that time on the flightdeck.
I am happy to take the responsibilities and I will do my utmost to garantee the safety of my passengers and myself. But I have also accepted that if something goes wrong there will be a 50% change they will eat me alive no matter what I did! That is why I will defend any pilot unless he is proven to be absolutely not qualified, and there are very few of those around. And I am quite certain that the guys from eirjet are quite qualified.
Why can we pilots not leave the bashing of our collegues to the other guys. There are already so many out there who will slaughter us at their convenience. I am not talking about protecting our own, or covering up mistakes. I am just asking for a bit of respect for the guys that are going to a lot harder period right now then you and me behind the PC.
Thank you!