Many thanks Me Myself for those fantastic posts about that AF inside history that I remember quite well. The Unions description is a typical French situation , not limited to AF, we have exactly the same mess in ATC.
Having left France, my home country, 30 years ago , and re- trained to different safety philosophies when I was still young and impressionable, I always looked in the past at the "French cultural exception " with a mix of amazement and sympathy. Like the sympathy one has for the small outsider fighting against the big US Anglo-Saxon machine. It was Ziegler-David fighting Boeing-Goliath, French on the R/T at all costs, Concorde with an "e" in the end, landing an helicopter on top of Mt Everest, just to name a few .
Now a few years later, a lot of incidents/accidents later and looking at the end result (St Odile, Gonesse, Brest, Cayenne/Toronto , Pau, South Atlantic etc..) this feeling has turned to real embarrassment.
I do not want to bring Asseline out of the closet again but It is amazing to think that for a few meters more, the crowd would have cheered and, as training Capt on the first A320s in AF then, he would most probably be chief OPS at AF today.
To change a culture normally takes a generation , but AF managed to pass on that culture from generation to generation.
The Dutch were in a similar situation in the 70s and 80s with blunt overconfidence causing an accident every 3 years , but managed to turn that around completely. The French (and AF) unfortunately has not done that yet. I hope they get the message this time.
The name of the imminent replacement of Gourgeon is already known apparently but will he read and learn from the Colin report and start changing the culture ?