Me Myself - you're right, there has been some serious thread creep at work; I only wanted to correct some misconceptions on both sides of the argument whenever the language issue turns up.
Back to the topic: whoever leaked the internal memo (either management or someone in the pilot workforce) must have their own agenda. Trouble is, now that it's in the open, both sides will play to the public, to try to score points and be seen to be doing something. While there is an argument for not keeping things under wraps, one can guess that nothing much will be achieved on technical matters under the media spotlight. The originators of the memo must have been incredibly naive to think that in the age of the internet, it wouldn't be leaked faster than you can press the "forward" key on your browser... unless of course that was the idea all along! I agree that this has put both sides (but mainly the pilots) under incredible pressure to deliver (or not to foul up).
Of course, in the absence of further flight safety occurences, the issue might just disappear from the public gaze, but the damage is done.
However, in due time we can expect the conclusions of the Delta safety audit to become public in the same way, and (if their track record with Korean Air is anything to go by) they tend not to mince their words.
Cheers
