For the Rex CP to make an analogy like this is naive at best
Naive in this forum - yes. Naive in the press, speaking to the general public - no.
The trouble is that the general public doesn't know much about the aviation industry & they don't really care, as long as the fares are cheap & they think that they are safe. The article reads well, is believable & comes from a senior executive in the industry. And yes, most people
do believe what they read in the papers.
Every time a statement like this is made in the press & is left unchallenged & unanswered, we lose a little bit of ground with the public. It has to stop. Every self-serving, biased & misleading statement made around the world by anyone in airline management must be countered with a reasoned, measured response so that the public becomes, & then remains educated about the important aspects of the industry.
The only way to fight this is to provide a counter argument in the press from a credible source, each & every time. The press needs to develop a need to check for a response from the pilot group every time a statement is made by airline management, & then print that response. And a credible source would be the
PR department of a major pilot union, preferably a national union, speaking for all Australian pilots.
Why fight this in the press? We need two things from the public. A demand for increased safety & a tolerence for higher airfares. Higher airfares are the only way the airlines will pay more for crew & training. And more training will lead to better safety.
We can go on all day about the profits made & how the airlines can afford to pay more for salaries & training, but with the shareholders continually putting the pressure on company management for increasing returns on investment & current business practice paying more & more for senior executives, this just isn't going to happen any time soon.
If the demand for increased safety forces the politicians to act & they then force the regulatory authority to legislate, the result will be a level paying field for the airlines. The increased costs will affect all. The public will hopefully accept the increased fares this will bring, as they have read about the issue in the press & are willing to pay a little extra for their safety.
But the union better have a credible spokesperson who does well under pressure, who can debate on his/her feet & who has all the facts. Because the airlines will unite against this dissemination of the facts in an attempt to discredit it as biased, unsubstantiated, self-serving & fear-mongering. And if we can't counter those allegations, we will be even worse off.