Despite all the vitriole I find one thing stands out here.
In the 'old' days of Ansett and Australian, East West and so on, right through to pre - 9/11 and just AN & QF there existed a level of prefessional respect between Australian Airline pilots.
Nowadays this seems to have been replaced by mistrust and a total lack of respect. Comments along the lines of 'you are not good enough cos you failed our process' were few and far between only a few years ago.
Now it seems a standard.
Whist no one should hold the Virgin pilots responsible for capitalising on an opportunity, it does appear that the emergence of the low cost airline has created two seperate camps of Australian pilots.
Time will tell if there will ever be a reconciliation, however in the meantime all we can expect is a string of insults levelled at one another.
One thing is for sure, unless or until there is a major incident / accident involving pilot error the arguments on both sides are simply hyperbole.
I sincerely hope to see more hyperbole and no more.