When an accident occurs, there is a lot of sanctimonious twaddle spoken by people who were not there but would have done so much better than the people who were. Such is the case here, whereby pilots who are blessed to be in senior positions within the industry were presumably born from their mother's womb with a logbook containing 10,000 hours in their hands. They never had to struggle to get a job, required no help from anyone else and were just so employable they did not have to sell their souls like these nasty little CTC cadets. What they forget is that once upon a time, they too aspired to be an airline pilot. They sat down and read every possible book and magazine on the subject and worked out the route most likely to bring success. To some it was joining HM Forces, to others it was PPL, CPL, SCPL, ATPL, Instructor Rating, Turboprops and then jets. To still others it was Hamble cadetship. They did whatever they had to do to become pilots. Right now the only way to achieve that dream we all had is to become a CTC cadet. It costs a fortune but debt is way more acceptable today than it was previously, plus it was a clear route to a jet job. Who, hand on heart, can blame anyone for doing it? Plenty of you it would appear! What would you have done if you were starting out again? I know what I would have done - gone to CTC because I simply had no other choice. How can you be so self-righteous now as to blame these guys/gals for doing so?
We now have real-live airline pilots at easyJet living 3 to a room on mattresses on the floor to somehow stave off greater debt, and yet they are criticised for it. This is so wrong - these guys are becoming slaves in a way we never were. Rather than carp on from our ivory towers about 'back in the day', we must ensure that the latest entrants into our industry are protected from the vile excesses of Ruinair, Brookfield, easyJet and CTC. They are all part of the same deal - rich thieves getting richer whilst poor pilots get poorer. The only effective counter to this is BALPA - warts and all. They deserve our full support as without them this industry is finished.