I cannot think of another profession where a bad day at the office (not a major incident) becomes the subject of such public scrutiny.
Okay, under a different thread I've rubbished some decision-making at the CAA, but we haven't a clue who made it and anyway it was the result of a decision that was considered, not made against a critical time restraint. It may have wasted public money.
In this case, our comments are targeting one specific crew. They know who they are and so must dozens of other pilots. They made a decision to the best of their ability and many of us may have made the same one, and here we are analysing their every move. To have thousands of the general public and journo sharks lapping it all up makes it 100 times worse.
Perhaps I'm just too thin-skinned, but if I was on this crew reading all this stuff I would probably be so demoralised that I would hang up my headset and call it a day.
We have the option of reading Pprune or not. This crew have no option as to whether they appear on Pprune, and like it or not they are here in big red lights.
Pprune has achieved communication that would have been unheard of ten years ago and is of huge benefit to our professional community in so many ways. But we are now using it (unwittingly) to throw one of our number to the lions with the crowds cheering from the sidelines. Is this what we really want?