Chuks,
Far better to tell them to wind their necks in and concentrate on getting that little bag of peanuts open.
I sometimes wonder how many paying passengers the airline-industry has lost for the overt arrogance pilots expose towards the so called "self loading freight" in a public forum like PPrune.
During my past 10 years as a TV producer, I saw a revolution bring new digital cameras and editing decks to the markets, where they became available to the general public. A knowledge and
gnosis once reserved for "us" was now available to everybody. Even "average-bright" pilots started making movies and expressing opinions about how to make them. Is that an offence to me? No.
Just finished the '08 travel budget for my department. We cut back on the domestic flights this year considerably, since people appeared to favour hi-speed train travel and going by their own cars instead. As a long-necked peanut-eater, I didn't put my irrational fascination for aviation in their way.