Little Boy, allow me to give you an example as to why I reacted the way I did to your – let’s face it – very serious allegation. And as you read on, the fact that you mention that your contacts with EK pilots was via your friendship with some EK FAs might be particularly pertinent.
A little over 12 months ago, (mid Jan 2006), a senior EK pilot was doing his annual line check, an 8.00am departure to another Gulf port. On the first leg, the check captain had left the flight deck briefly for the usual reason and when he returned, asked the captain if he could speak to him in private in the forward galley. He told the captain that one of the FAs had just told him that she had seen the captain at a party the night before ‘absolutely wasted’ only an hour or two before sign-on for the flight.
The captain was mystified, as the last thing even the most cock-sure of us is going to be doing before his early morning line check (or any flight!) is even
attending a party the night before, let alone being ‘absolutely wasted’ at it. He asked to speak to the girl who had made the allegation.
“Oh, I didn’t see you; one of the other girls on the crew did.”
The other girl was asked to come to the galley and she was asked if what the first girl said was true. “Oh, it wasn’t last night – it was last week at *****’s party.”
“That was New Year’s Eve!” said the captain, (over a week earlier). “And I had the first few days of January off.”
“Yes, but you were really drunk.” replied the girl.
The two captains involved laughed the incident off – a classic case of Chinese Whispers.
I’m not sure I would have been so laid back about it. Those two young ladies needed to be made aware that there are consequences to making comments like that.
In your original post, you say you saw
“Emirates pilots drinking to excess before flying and some of those observed were repeat offenders.”
Although you don’t actually say it, most people reading a comment like that would take it to read “drinking to excess immediately before flying” (ie, late at night the night before an early morning departure).
It would seem from your second post that your sources who introduced you to these EK pilots are EK FAs. Is it possible that your routine sightings might have been a bit like the one I’ve detailed above? If they weren’t, and your recollections are accurate, I’d hate to think how you’d have felt if just on one of the many occasions over that 9 year period where you routinely saw EK pilots drinking to excess before flights, 300+ people had died due to the pilot being drunk.