About ten years ago I remember seeing a newspaper article about airlines and airline management. At the time, there had been quite a few airlines which had grown from small outifts into major forces in the industry, and their days of being managed by a pilot were vanishing - most senior managers nowadays seem to be accountants or lawyers.
The theme of the article was that there was nothing in a pilot's background that would fit him to manage a major corporation. He may be excellent with a small team on an aircraft, and at handling the technology, but that was it.
Ten-ish years on, I put the question the other way around - what training or aptitude do lawyers and accountants have that pilots don't? Their teamwork experience is frequently far less than that of a pilot. They don't necessarily have the experience of direct contact with the customer that the crews have. And often they simply don't understand the business.
An accountant's entire history is of looking at the bottom line. And as anyone who is
not an accountant would tell them if they'd only listen, the bottom line tells you very little of the overall picture. An accountant sees a pilot's maximum duty hours, wonders why the company is not achieving that "target" and concludes that he is not "making sufficient use of resources" (i.e., human beings).
Lawyers' experience is of contest, of contention, in which you either win or lose. A lawyer's only experience, usually, of an unhappy customer is when he is banged up for ten years - not many complaints departments in lawyers' practices! Lawyers don't generally need good
PR - apart from repeat serial offenders, clients who need to be kept by being kept sweet are corporate clients - not individuals.
A good senior pilot, after ten or twenty years in the business, knows aviation. He knows the business. He knows how to create and foster good team spirit. He knows what keeps the passengers happy.
It's time we sent him off to do an MBA and put him in charge. Accountants and lawyers do not belong in the jobs they are trying (and too often failing) to do.