There are a few captains on this thread whose approach is 'the captain has absolute authority, all must obey instantly and if failure to obey gets you a blooded face, so be it'. There are excellent operational reasons for captains' authority, and the last thing they need is regulation or statute which complicates or curtails it. But touting such discretion as the final word in a case like this is unwise: there is huge public dismay at this case and those who use 'the rules' to justify it must remember that 'the rules' ultimately depend on society's consent and consensus: don't issue a loud open invitation for your degree of discretion (and every other captains) to be formally reassessed and possibly curtailed by insisting blindly that your powers make it impossible for any way you treat pax to be deemed unreasonable.
If you were to treat people, within the rules and without exceeding your authority, in a manner which appalled the Senate Committee with responsibility for transport, do you really imagine that they would regard the existence of those rules and that authority as the end of the matter?
Last edited by robdean; 13th Apr 2017 at 07:18.