At last we have, not only a shameless apologist for the endless distortions of a lifetime spent in the languid embrace of BLAPA, but an articulate and enthusiastic supporter of them who, with nary a shrug, dismisses the objections of the brethren as irrelevant. You've just gotta sit back and admire such hauteur, Rainbow. My hat off to you, Sir.
As an old friend wrote here years ago...
You'll find more loyalty in a Bangkok whorehouse than you will amid a group of pilots.
Quite so.
Aer Lingus is in intensive care, operating within a set of constraints largely imposed upon it by the endlessly enlightened folk of IALPA, accustomed as they are to receiving €400,000 for a part time A330 training command. Nice work if you can get it, boys, but don't they bleat when it looks like being taken away! Here's the really funny bit, though, rather than hang their heads in shame for a lifetime of unrestrained avarice, rather than working together with the airline to solve a problem largely of their own making, they dare criticise Astraeus for making hay for the five minutes the sun is shining. Hilarious.
If ever there was any doubt that pilot unions are unfit for purpose; any doubt that BLAPA exists
only for itself and British Airways, and that IALPA are a bunch of feckless, self-interested, semi-literate windbags (evening dim repa), you'd have to travel far to find an example more stark than the pages herein. Remember Goneril to her father King Lear...
Sir, I love you more than word can yield the matter;
Dearer than eyesight, space, and liberty;
Beyond what can be valued, rich or rare;
No less than life, with grace, health, beauty, honor;
As much as child e’er loved, or father found
A love that makes breath poor, and speech unable.
Beyond all manner of so much I love you
Dearer than eyesight indeed. Shakespearean pilot’s ode to BLAPA.
It's a new world, ladies and gentlemen of the air. Yesterday's unions aren't going to make it any less new, or protect you from its reality and they may very well bite off the hand that feeds you. On the subject of which, and with impeccable timing, it's happening in Helsinki too, where the unionised brethren at Finnair seek to renew the sable lining of their all-weather, state-protected flying jackets, by striking this very day. Interestingly, Air Baltic, a well run, well paid LCC, seeks to fill the void. What do you think the previously loyal Finnair customers will do with their bookings of the future once they've tasted the freedom of the same thing at a fraction of the price?
Oh, and if you're going to have a go at Rainbow for drinking deeply from the BLAPA watering hole his entire career only to occupy a 757 well into autumnal years, give a care to the long suffering FOs at GSS, where BLAPA fed B744 retirees, the Kobe Beef of the pilot community, continue to clog the arteries and careers of entirely able GSS first officers. As a true testament to the enduring value of incest, they, too, are BLAPA members. Ask one of 'em to tell you the response they get from BLAPA if they dare complain.
Most entertaining.