Another Urban Myth, bonuses to be made. If only!
A long time ago, when avaition was still a proffesion, and not a job, and pilots didn't rubbish one another because of the airline they worked for, no more than they do for the colour of their skin in this day and age, British Airways very kindly produced a monthly digest, a summary, of all the incident reports for the previous month and published them to all who wished to subscribe. Most of the newer operators of various types, the B737 being one of the most popular at the time, were given the benefit of the vast accumulated knowledge gained from the British Airways fountain.
The booklet ran to several pages, BA having maybe 80 or 90 of the type at that time. Faults, delays, incidents, MEL queries, even accidents were all published for the greater good of the industry. Sadly, this is no longer the case. Secrecy and corporate responsibility steer our behaivour in this litiginous age. Publicity from these incidents, when seen by the general public, make for bad publicity, hence, they are published no more.
I mention this only in light of the fact that Ryanair, which the vast majority of proffesional pilots who actually know what they are talking about, are considered to be in the forefront of pilot and cabin crew training (they do so much of it!) and have procedures equally as good if not better than the industry standard SOP's.
Ryaniar now operate over 250 B737-800 all over Europe, more than the total BA fleet. If Ryanair were to produce a booklet similar to BAs it would be ridiculed and derided at every opportunity both here and in the press, so what has changed? Is it any wonder that any incident in this age of instant news, Twitter, i-phones, Blackberrys etc. that all and every mishap is reported as a major accident?
To those of you who are of the opinion that Ryaniar is a whack job with flakey pilots and retarded engineering staff, I would ask you in all honesty; when you are made redundant and the only airline to offer you employment at your local airport is Ryanair, will you say no to £95k a year and queue for your £5k of benefits?
Perspective is only real if you open your eyes and look at all aspects of the situation. Some onlookers here seem to be looking at Ryanair from every angle but the corrct one, face on. They see optional extras as rip-offs, on line check-in as a scam, free seating as abattoir-like and 20 minute turn-arounds as simply unacheivable so they must be unsafe etc.etc. when most if not all these things will become the norm in the furure. It might not be what you would like in an ideal world but this is reality, and sliding off the runway at taxi speed on the ice is a real life event that happens to everyone, or could be!
If such an event occurs in your future flying carreer, I trust you will come back here and apologise. But hey, stupid of me to think such an event would ever happen to you!
Last edited by rubik101; 18th Oct 2010 at 06:12.