Hand Solo:
"Which airline has flown billions of passengers across the world for over twenty five years without a crash"?
I always feel a bit uncomfortable when someone trots out the "safety card". It almost seems to be tempting fate. It could just as easily have been one of your 757s that bit the dust over southern Germany last week. Would one of your crews have reacted any differently to the TCAS warning than the DHL crew did? I very much doubt it.
Anyway, I presume that you are referring to British Airways in your safety statement? If so, what about the accident to Boeing 737-236 G-BGJL at Manchester on 22 August 1985? Please don't tell me that this doesn't count for it was a British Airtours flight and not a British Airways flight for that would be rather disingenuous.
The fact of the matter is that BA has had its fair share of luck over the years. The near collision between the 747 and the Penta Hotel is a case in point.
The Channel 4 documentary hardly presented a very good image of crew professionalism and made one wonder how long this had been going on for Channel 4 to get a hold of the story in the first place. The national press reports of the 757 captain who tried to report for a flight at Athens some 2 hours after leaving a night club were scarcely edifying either. I also seem to remember something about a BA F/O in uniform failing a police breathaliser test on the M4 on his way to work?
Let's face it, a lot of luck has been involved as well as everything else otherwise any one of the aforementioned gentlemen could easily have caused a disaster.
I am not surprised that your ex-Air Atlantique guys are happy. I would guess that they find their new life in BA money for old rope compared to where they have been.
I have never flown the products of M Airbus but friends who know (senior Airbus trainers) tell me that once you have grasped the Airbus philosophy, they are a piece of cake to operate. Let's face it, hundreds and hundreds of them get airborne every day all over the world and very, very few of them end up as smoking heaps!
I think SBA was perhaps trying to suggest that his job is just a wee bit more demanding than yours. I think he might well be right.