My goodness what a lot of hot air there is blowing around this story... so many asking questions … how did he do this …how did he do that … it shouldn’thave happened … well it did and now there is a need for those involved to pickup the pieces.
To suggest there was anything predetermined or orchestrated about this story is in my humble opinion ridiculous. To suggest that a kid of 11 years old really thought it through and understood the implications of what he was doing is also ridiculous.
On the day he got lucky, circumstances conspired to allow this to happen … with luck like his he should have been choosing lottery numbers for his mum last week (lottery is about 14 million to 1 that probably isn't far out with stats around this incident)
Yes there have been some embarrassing failures; this has brought the spotlight on some elements of procedure which need to be reviewed. But with the whole process relying so much on the performance of many individuals then it is hardly surprising that on occasion mistakes are made and something goes wrong. On this ocassion several failures lined up ... that's what happens sometimes.
As a business pax flying out of MAN I’ve witnessed some absolutely crap behaviour by gate staff and cabin staff; the truth is that could happen anywhere, it is not location specific, it is down to how the industry works … low cost … tight turnarounds et al … it’s an incident waiting to happen … and here it did happen
And you know what ... when it does happen it has probably already been allowed for by a very low probability score on a risk assessment somewhere ...