bill,
You can teach a monkey to fly, I believe NASA did. If you believe that the ability to fly an airliner in normals ops is demanding then fair enough. I tend to believe that its a good idea to have the best people money can buy in the right seats for when the holy sh$t day comes along. Sioux city, the SAS md80, the ba Lagos flight all spring to mind. U appear to have missed my point that the present day managers armed with the safety stats of the modern jet are now so confident that a monkey can do it they have decided they can afford to hire the cheapest and not the best pilot. Im old fashioned, I'd rather be flown by people I trust. Happily jump on an easy flight, wouldn't touch a Ryan air one. Does that clear it up for u?
As for my popularity, im pretty happy that I get on with most of the people I meet and the last 18 years of checks and course's have pretty much confirmed I'm a pretty average bloke amongst a group of pretty talented operators. Excuse me if this is arrogant but Ive been judged by the hardest task masters in the business and not been found wanting, well not often. I'll stop flying when I'm dumb enough to believe I've stopped learning. Im certainly not a superstar, I do know a few though, but I've never paid for a minutes flying. I've had 2 interviews and got 2 jobs. I've trained with men who had talent in abundance and died because they made mistakes. I learned everybody makes mistakes and some of us get lucky and live to learn from them. I've been trained by men whose abilities and conviction were inspiring. At no time did I find myself in a cockpit that I hadn't worked my bollix off to get into on merit, never had to pay a bribe to sit there.
So that all said I, like you, have earned my right to an opinion. You may think its arrogant to want to work with those that have the aptitude and ability regardless of financial resources. I think its sad that you seem to have no idea of the standards and ideals those who made flying a profession strived to achieve.
I refuse to apologise for holding in contempt those that feel that having undermined the principle of fair pay in order to get in cockpits and who now demand balpa spends its energy not fighting for an industry wide line in the sand but for improving the lot of the very pilots that have given ww and mol the evidance that they can demean our position and destroy our futures.