Thanks Mark, I’m sure that you will seriously represent the concerns of flight crew, but in a week when we’ve seen such blatant distortions and crude stereotypes trotted out by the Mail, you might forgive us all taking this with an unhealthy pile of salt.
My primary concerns are as follows:
- the large volume of legislation being thrust upon us by the administration in the name of ‘security’, but more to do with ‘spin’, leading to flight crew members being boroscoped in public every time we go to fly our own plane. What are we going to do? Hijack ourselves?
- Similarly the proscribing of family members accompanying us on the flight deck because they are a ‘security risk’, as opposed to some bloke I’ve never met with an ID he could have made up on his PC.
- the cynical Jihad about so-called drinking and flying whilst conspiring to make us fly unsafe hours, completely in the face of legislation designed to avoid fatigue which is a real killer.
- This illusion about pilot salaries. My headline salary might look quite attractive, but factor in the relative lack of extras, and the long hours, separation etc and it doesn’t look quite so rosy. Compare that to some of my neighbours who have company car, assisted house purchase, health care for the whole family, airmiles, school fees, and of course the annual bonus which for one computer nerd round the corner was £100k last year. That makes me the pauper of the neighbourhood.
- The staggeringly inept standard of British management in general and airline management in particular. Most of the pilots in the UK are proud professionals who do the job regardless to the best of their abilities and very successfully. Most of the suits we are forced to put up with see this loyalty as a sign of weakness. They continue to pile more and more responsibility on the pilot whilst taking away his authority and demeaning his status in favour of a ‘flatter’ management structure.
You’ll find that most pilots will tell you that once the aeroplane is safely airborne and away from the suits, the operation runs in a quiet, calm, efficient manner until once again we come down to Earth and the stress of dealing with assholes.
The reason that management hate pilots is that we refuse to play the game of bollitics that their sad lives revolve around. Pilots hate management because the qualities that make a good pilot are completely, diametrically opposed to the qualities exhibited by managers.
I’m sorry to rant, but if you worked for a company like mine you would encounter this everyday. Pilots have accountability and little authority. Managers have authority, but little or no accountability.
I’ll take on the opposition anyday. It’s my management I can’t beat!