How has leaving everything to the captain worked out in the last 12months or so? If you take a purist view it’s a strong argument but it is clear that there are failings and in the majority of recent accidents those failings are with paid pilots of great experience. So where does that leave things?
For reasons lost to me aviation has seen a great race to the bottom in terms of compensation and conditions. Not only has pay been eroded but you find that individuals are paying for their own training and now we are in this quite ridiculous situation of pilots happy to fly on a contract basis by the hour and only paid if they fly… Now that might not be directly relevant to this accident but it is set against this background.
Its been said many times here to the effect that should a pilot not control the owner then he isn’t worth his salt, but that’s just the same as saying that anyone who drinks 10 pints and drives a car isn’t worthy of a driving licence. It might be true, it might be obvious, it might be valid but it doesn’t change the potential end result.
Doing nothing is easy. Turning a blind eye, that’s easy. The individual in these circumstances might be reckless or oblivious to their actions but specifically this owner has had many “complaints” on this forum against how he ran things and I can’t believe that other professional pilots are not having actual conversations that don’t raise eyebrows.
The “professional” in professional pilot might mean more that just the fact money changes hands.