First post...not a pilot...not pretending to be unlike others on this thread..
Actually I was quite scared of flying, and joined pprune a while ago to help cure my fear hearing from you folk talk about modern flying..which it did, thanks
That being said, from a consumers perspective, their is not a hope in the world you would get me on an Airbus. My staff have been banned from booking me on Qantas, Jetstar or Air New Zealand for this reason, and this reason only. Virgin get my $20k worth of business per annum for this reason only.
Qantas has had quite a major issue with a A330 over Perth, Jetstar had one last week on a Mel-Singapore flight, Air New Zealand crashed one in France a few months back, add to the the Air France flight and a couple of others...
Now for my two bob on the Air France Foreign Correspondant show: I watched the ABC show and agree with most on this thread that it was a bit of a beat up. We can speculate on what happened but until we know, we can only look at likely causes, put in place procedures to ensure those likely causes dont potentially occur again, but we cant string people or companies up without hard facts, it doesnt do anybody any good to do that. That said, Airbus is getting a perception issue.
As I said, might be a perfectly safe aircraft, but perceptions are everything.