Some members of the SNPL* have been involved in a long-standing political dispute with Airbus which is obviously going to have an effect on those demands. I personally (for all that may be worth) think it's wrong-headed, and it's certainly not based on a thorough understanding of the systems design. Others will feel differently, and that's their prerogative.
I doubt much will come of it because the existing system is demonstrably as safe as any of the alternatives on offer - the narrative history of the types and the stats bear this out.
Airbus hired engineering pilots like the late Capt. Corps and others of his calibre because they *wanted* that kind of input on the design - you don't hire a former ARB chief test pilot simply to make him toe the company line. It's almost slanderous to imply that may have been the case, or that his focus was on anything other than professionalism and safety above all else. Remember that he died in the Himalayas - he didn't need to be there but nevertheless he personally demanded to head up the technical investigation team on that accident. Understand that he not only dedicated his life to making your lives up front - as well as ours in the back - as safe as possible, he ended up *giving* his life in pursuit of that cause.
You can deride my input as "knee-jerk" (it isn't), you can throw as much mud at me as you please and I won't give a flying glob of monkey-spunk - but to refer to a pilot of Corps' character by putting his life's calling in sarcastic quotation marks, or to claim that he and his team would ultimately be little more than rubber-stamps for company policy is, in my opinion, utterly beyond the pale. Shame on you.
* - Aided and abetted by fringe agitators like Henri Marnet-Cornus and Norbert Jacquet...
Last edited by DozyWannabe; 29th Dec 2012 at 23:02.