enjoyed reading your post Chris and to some extents you have hit the nail on the head but the story is more complicated.
First I was due to start at Hamble in 1968 but the bean counters cancelled my course and when it was reinstated I wasn't informed...they couldn't make up their minds on the pilot requirements...
We were terribly privileged ..no wars and at a time of huge social change which had really started with the ex servicemen who had mutinied after the end of the war when the authorities decided to leave them to rot whilst raw materials were shipped back. Add to that the treatment of our non white military and the Irish.(and women).
I was fortunate to get into grammar school..4% of the population achieved 2 A levels...which got me into Hamble although on my course we had a couple of guys with O levels from secondary Mod.
I grew up with the Mods and Rockers wars in Southend and the extent of the corruption in the police force was only just becoming generally known.
(as we now know the extent of pedophilia and rape was yet to surface).
My wife went on a band the bomb march...her mother still doesn't know..and attended a Welsh extremist party...full of nutters...then it was Bebe and Mary Quant.
The RAF were loosing more than two aircraft a week.
Hamble was fantastic...especially as the instructors were all ex-fighters...they didn't get into the airline because that was sewn up by the bomber boys.
But we had the philosophy of chop a third to get higher standard...which nearly included me.
There wasn't a choice of Corporation because BOAC had stopped recruiting although some of my mates went to Courtline and generally have had a more rewarding career than the BA guys...stand by for incoming Al.
I must qualify what I am going to write next...some is my own experience ...some is from Balpa and some from senior management...(some of which I only discovered recently).
BEA had a career structure in LHR of seniority dictating the fleet with the exception of management bypassing everything.
AJ had a typical BEA career...vanguards ..Trident..Tristar (with a bespoke Trident cockpit - one of the reasons they were given to the RAF)...BCal DC10 ..early command and BEA ftm who went onto the 747. The 747 was the way to get a huge pension..crystalising.....around 150 grand index linked for some.
Unlike AJ I spent my career either going onto a brand new aircraft, or a new training system or in the case of the Trident a war zone. We actually had trainers fly up to Prestwick...do a detail and fly back to LHR...
The first hit of tribalism was when a captain said "he's a fkg sergeant pilot".
Then three years on "Fkg masons"...and when I was researching my book ..many times...followed by "fkg guild"...which happens to be true.
I was flying in the Pyrenees when I had a conversation with an ex world champion who said "public school boys" ...which wasn't the problem as most were very competent and gentlemen.
What I read very recently is that BEA management had a fear of the government giving the company to BOAC...and asking an ex FM he stated that this went back to 1948!...This would tie in with my experiences.
The strange part was that in BOAC this mentality didn't exist...we just looked upon others..even the charter boys ;-) as professionals...
The effect of this was a culture of everything in BOAC is rubbish...possibly to prevent an amalgamation ..it used up a huge amount of unnecessary energy which lead IMHO to the horrendous accident rate.
The energy could have been used for flight safety.
Look at the Munich disaster (Stan Key was the rep)...two accident reports in similar circumstances had been sent to BEA but were not promulgated to the crews. The Trident disaster was the same thing...except there were three.
The vanguard over ghent was a problem known for two years and ignored.
The BOAC boys did a fantastic job turning the culture around but many of them were ex Hamble and younger.
Not that the bomber boys were all bad ...I flew with some wonderful captains who were older than my father and treated me like a mate...I learnt a lot.
In BEA we had to have a short back and sides...and our Vol 5 said we had to salute training captains...we looked like ex Cons...whilst BOAC had long hair like the Stones...there are some good videos of the time..
Then there was our diction....I'm from Sarfen...I had to smartly change it as did "Northerners" ...best wind up was an ex public school mate of mine who wound up a T3 captain who had an affected accent...probably ex borstal...and spoke with cockney vernacular..
The other copilot basically called the captain a CT...all BEA.
I was shocked by the story but you have to consider the animosity after PI especially as the lengths management went to hang the crew out to dry.
It is a pity that the AAIB wasn't allowed to thoroughly investigate the accident and it was a public inquiry..I think history could have been changed.
The VC 10 was the best part of my career but it cost me friends...as I left the tribe...but who ...in their right mind ...wouldn't have swopped shuttle back up, drinking a pint of heavy, eating curry and chips in Sockihall? street without cabin crew and discussing how much draft pay Sid had earned to drinking a Singapore Sling in the old Raffles with some real honeys...add that to most of the old Empire...I am sure you experienced the life in Bcal..
When I was leaving for SR a BEA skipper phoned me up and said "Ace you are a CT if you go to SR...my neighbour is a captain..and he said so".
It took me five years to find out the truth...ex bomber command...just like some of the guys in BEA and the Atlantic Barons...if you read Reg on gaining a RAF brevet you will see a similar problem with anti semantism.
This guy insulted all of the Swiss...not unlike the English with the Africans, Irish and women...and so some of them took revenge on moi...
It wasn't all one sided as we had many laughs and the crumpet was better than the Debs in BEA.
Monitored approach.
It was probably developed because of lack of handling skills...indeed there was a rumour about putting the captain on the P3 position..apparently as the Russsians did.
IMHO it was half
[email protected] the captain did the throttles...and we were not allowed to use manual throttle except if an engine failed when it was obligatory.
So you really never knew what was going in with windshear and one of my mates had a tail strike because of the skipper's poor throttle handling.
On my VC 10 course I had great fun as we had a North East guy who flew the opposite of BEA and a BEA guy who had swallowed his ops manual...light the blue touch paper.
BOAC philosophy was one guy flies the aircraft (including throttles) and the other monitors him....same in SR.
What AJ probably knew was the great FTM of our era did most of his Tristar conversion with the AP plugged in...says it all...he was also the guy who authorised our 1179 when the BofT refused - see PI report.
The last five years have been very interesting...not only after I discovered PPrune but from openly talking about our era and understanding how the industry has evolved.
But it is still fundamentally flawed as I believe we need far more transparency... all FDRs need reading, full time CVR, complete FOI...after all we owe it to our passengers....and to ourselves as pilots are the first to die and the first to be blamed.
I was involved in mountain gliding and aerobatics...occasionally both together ...which is a shining example...but paragliding isn't because the advertising revenues pay for the magazines and so we fly some terrible kit...
But boy have I had some fun....45 years flying, 15 years teaching joe blogs off the street to fly...visited 1/2 the known world..and a modest pension ;-)