I’ve just read the FI editorial and Wiley is spot on in what he says. If anything, he pulled his punches in what he said.
In his pontificating, the FI editor has shown extraordinary ignorance of recent events within PAL, and risks being lumped in with his colleagues at the ‘Sun’ or ‘News of the World’ by professionals within the industry. One quote in particular stood out: “If anyone at PAL did read it, (the NTSB report of the 1997 crash of the Korean aircraft on the same hill in Guam) [i] they seem not to have passed the lessons on to the airline’s operations department and flight crews.[i]”
Dear Ed: as Wiley so succinctly put it, thanks to PAL’s (mis)management, none of the current PAL flight crews were employed by PAL, (at least under their current blackleg contracts), when the NTSB report on the 1997 crash was published. It’s a new workforce, employed by PAL management to break the backs of a professional group of pilots, and no one in that new workforce is going to risk going his job by telling that management anything they don’t want to hear.
Wouldn’t it be fantastic if ‘the industry’ took on board what the editor of FI was saying and saw that the current direction in which many of them are headed with their continual undermining of the status their pilots once enjoyed is heading for disaster, and if pilots are afraid to tell said management any ‘bad news’, (as this crew appeared to be), the industry is headed towards self destruction.
Wiley’s right – the way the industry’s going, twenty years from now Aviation will be like the Merchant Marine of today, with Third Word crews on Third World wages operating the aircraft fleets of the world – because any young man with half a brain in his head will have seen that, no matter how much he might like the idea of flying, it simply isn’t worth getting into. The managements of the day will still find crews, but they’ll be pale shadows of what airline crews once were.