No, not a dodgy video, just the standard 2 monthly rant that's due on the subject as I'm in a bad mood today.
Every time I see my mate who's a training captain for Easy down the pub he looks exasparated. "Why haven't you got a job yet?" he demands. "We're desparate" he continues. "There are jobs everywhere" he adds, throwing in "you're not trying hard enough" Grrrrrr.
So I point out that the only way into Easy (without 500 hours multi crew) is via CTC and they've got an age limit of 33 (I am 38), which seems to shut him up for a couple of pints.
So I got to thinking. We've got age discrimination laws coming very soon I believe. Also we live in a bonkers human rights/entitlement culture. At the risk of sounding like Richard Littlejohn, if I am a kiddy fiddler it is my human right to download porn in my prison cell... if I am a terrorist hijacker it's my human right to get a fully furnished house and a regular income (you couldn't make it up, etc).
So I've decided it is my human right to be an airline pilot and not be discriminated against because of my age. "Aha" I hear you say... "oldies are extremely high training risks, so they'll just come out with some other excuse to weed you out". Well I say that complying with whatever nuts legislation is around is a cost of doing business. There are armies of people out there who's job it is to check how many disabled/gay/old/ethnic minority/jedi etc people a company interviews and subsequently hires. In my last job I was not allowed to not hire someone who for religious reasons needed to go home after lunch every Friday. Expensive & inconvenient for the company? Yes. Tough.
Imagine it all came out in the open and, an airline had to show a quota of over 50's in every type rating course? Ha! So what if it's expensive for the airlines. It's also expensive to back-fill for someone who goes on maternity leave, but companies still have to do it. I didn't invent the system!
So who fancies a bit of a class action against CTC for age discrimination? I know they don't actually employ you per se, but to all intents they're just proxies for Easy etc's age policy. Would it benefit me personally? No I'd probably be branded a trouble maker and never get a flying job ever. Not much change there then. Its a stupid enough idea we could probably get Cherie Blair to be our advocate and get it free on legal aid.
Come on people. I'm in a fundamentalist mood this morning. And on that note a message to all the Integrated bunnies using my head as a stepping stone to the top of the Connect hold pool: Be very careful when you cross the road
