Yep! But there are also airlines that have gone to the wall without fatal accidents and some that thrived even after reuniting hundreds of their fare paying customers with their maker. Without being too cynical, it's possible to conclude that with sufficient cash reserves and enough spin doctoring, it's possible for airline to survive the aftermath of a fatal accident.

But I just wish no one, ever puts this theory to test.

Whilst I made a sarcastic comment about accountants earlier (it's traditional), it must be the case that what comprises "professionalism" will vary between professions.

As aerospace professionals (pilots, engineers, ATCOs, etc.), our requirements for professionalism are pretty similar to each others, regardless of job.

Conversely however, a soldier might apply the same obsessive attention detail that we would, but might put "the mission" well ahead of loss of life, whilst we'd throw the task away every time to protect life and (to a lesser extent) equipment.

More extreme, we tend to include in our level of professionalism (and this would be common with the soldier for example) the integrity of everything behind the apparent (quality of flight planning, currency of data, maintenance schedules up to date). If you ever have the dubious pleasure of working in Television (it's happened to me a few times) they are the exact opposite - they don't mind all sorts of scams, dodgy equipment, poor preparation, inconsistency - all that matters to them is the apparence of the result: because the moment it's gone out on TV nothing else matters.

To an extent the same is true of business managers and management accountants. They only really care about the bottom line; which is the reason that there are so many laws made to ensure that they behave in an ethical manner - not to mention plenty of prosecutions when they don't. But similarly, I'll bet that they often crawl the walls when we (pilots, engineers, etc.) maintain what they'd regard as an obsessive and inappropriate attention to safety, ignoring the far more important (to them!) financial bottom line.

G

A few homilies (some of them my own :p )

An amateur pilot is surprised when something goes wrong; A professional pilot is surprised when everything works right.

Prepare for the worst outcome(s). Enjoy when the best occurs anyway.

No company will thank you for having an accident while trying to save them money.

A professional pilot can nearly always find a way to get the job done legally *and* safely - albeit with some modifications to the original task - using his/her knowledge & experience. An unprofessional pilot is either unaware or uncaring about the rules & good practice s/he breaks to ensure the job is done.

I have heard stories of certain airlines encouraging their pilots to skip de icing queues and take off with a little bit of ice on the plane,unless it is absolutely 100% necessary,rather than as a precaution, in the name of saving a few hundred quids worth of fuel. Such actions may be viewed as professionalism from a purely commercial perspective however from a flight safety perspective are criminal.

therefore i reckon professionalism is amoungst other things putting flight safety first, before commercial and personal considerations. That and getting to work on time, in a fit state to concentrate 100% on the job, neatly dressed, and you can't go wrong. In essence you need to behave a the manner which the couple of hundred people sitting behind you would expect you to.

I reckon though that a pilot should only be expected to behave professionally whilst on duty, they are normal people and are entitled to do what the hell they like at other times, id imagine a lot of people would be shocked if they knew what their pilot got up to outside of the plane!