Bonsoir,
Its a sad reflection on us (PPRuNers) that this topic has come up again with the same few people adding their views.
Its a hot topic for about a weekend then it slowly slips away. There has been almost a thousand hits on this subject but it still only gets a small handful of postings.
I am sure that if we were talking about Flight Crew working for 36 hours or told to ignore the rules there would be uproar and things mentioned in the press..
But no, its just us engineers having a moan. We are the biggest joke in aviation. Well, our managers must laugh all the way to their performance related bonus, at least.
The media choose to ignore us. Why? Because we wear overalls? Because they think we have no relation to Aircraft safety? Because we dont serve tea and coffee? Or is it simply because we ceaselessly do a thankless job in all conditions and very rarely make errors that they can scandalise? Who knows?
The CAA chose to ignore us too. I understand that they must be under an immense amount of pressure from their main source of funds (the airlines) to keep our duty limitations away from any kind of regulation. But, surely they must be able to see that it will not be too long before there is a major incident. You just have to look at the rail authorities in the UK and how badly they came unstuck.
By all rights this topic should run and run. But all you pilots, media types and managers who read this will just bury your heads in the sand and by this time next week we'll be out of your hair till the next time.
LP