Any recruitment likely at Easy?

[Major Cleve Saville]

Norman Stanley Fletcher

I have been in this industry a lot longer than you and I can remember a time in the seventies when there were only really 2 scheduled Jet Operators of note BEA/BOAC & BCal. The only way into BA/BOAC was through Hamble. You then entered a seniority based system with a long time to command. Promotion was not on merit just time served, no rewrd for good performance. The airlines themselves were really government employment agencies offering poor service at high cost. Competition was kept out of the market. Even ex-service pilots (and especially navigators) were effectively excluded for a while under this Soviet style system.

What has offered you opportunity and has allowed you, NSF, to advance so far is the free-market, the liberalisation of air carriers, the survival of the most astute.

Now you NSF having got yourself in a good position want a return to the seventies. I believe you may be a good old fashioned Glaswegian socialist. Do you intend that the airline industry go the way of Scottish shipbuilding, union closed shops lots of power to the unions, pesumably lots of industrial action until you get to tell the management how to run the company.

Your allegations of nepotism etc are very naive. have you never met a pilot who claims to have had his career halted by the trainer/checker he does not get on with? You think that aviation is somehow special? Insulated from the real world? How do you eliminate unfairness at that level, or any level. Your seniority system traps individuals from moving jobs and bettering themselves just as you did. And didn't you leave an airline with a seniority system to advance your career (as the system was holding you back) couldn't wait your 'fair' turn eh NSF? But you expect everyone else to?

The best way to ensure fair terms and conditions is a thriving, expanding industry with free market conditions both in the market place and the employment market. That has been my experience over the last thirty years in this industry.

Fairness! When was life fair? Under any system someone wil get screwed and others will be unfairly rewarded. At least the free market gives us a chance to compete on merit and mobilty to move on if it doesn't.

You are no longer in the employ of HMG NSF. easyJet is owned by the shareholders, the want return on capital and they expect the board to deliver. If they don't the money walks. If you don't like the way the company is run you can do the same.

Like most good socialists you want to benefit from the free market when times are good but protection from it when times are not so good.

Just how much of your lecturing here has to do with benefitting your fellow man an how much is protecting the position of NSF?

If you are that moral, you could find a seniority based company that is actually expanding or recruiting I am sure you are free to apply for a First Officers position just like everyone else.

But the real problem I have with your holier than thou, condescending, lectures on pprune is that you played the free market system to better yourself and now you want to limit others opportunity to do the same.

Oh sorry I forgot conditions were different then (exapnding free market) and you disadvantaged absoloutely no-one, ever, not one person, not even for a minute. So thats ok then.