Airbus Girl says:

"I'm not saying that alcohol is a necessity just that the rules and rosters are getting to the point where airlines rule your entire life, and there is no "time off" in reality".




:sad: :confused: :} :mad: :rolleyes: :cool: ;) :O :( :8

....What is she on about?

Where now for them?

Good luck, is all I can say.......

<<....What is she on about?>>

Hmm, thought I could understand but I'll leave it to AG to elucidate.

BBc news today said they'd been arrested for being over their company limit!

I think not, they were allegedly over the national Norwegian limit of Naff All.

Guilty or not of this misdemeanor, it is wrong to call them 'boozy pilots'

I put it to all but the tee-total, and then some of them will have a natural level above zero, that any one of us could fall foul of a zero limit. It is a nonsense, and as Airbusgirl says, impinges more and more on what private life the airlines give us time to 'enjoy'.

Soon only be able to have a few beers during the first week of a two week leave period, but still have your tax assessed by a pie-eyed tax man or accountant and your vital parts diced by a surgeon one over the eight!

Funny old world :bored: :confused:

Hmm

So the Sun gave the F/O a pay rise and sacked him in the same fell swoop. ("after the Sun revealed....etc")

Wish I was a journo, It'd be payback time. Doncha love the Scum's deliberately provocative use of language?

I hope that the guys concerned go home, reflect soberly (no pun intended) on what they've done, and after a few months, return to aviation sadder and wiser men.

Or is some little Hitler now going to suggest they never fly again??

Sad ending
 

I don't remember the exact details but a few years ago, a BA pilot almost landed his 747 on the motorway near Heathrow and was immediately suspended pending company investigation. He was a Scottish lad. No great surprise to learn that he quietly disappeared and was found a few days later in the Black Isle with a hose pipe from his exhaust into his car.
I agree with the earlier comment that these two lads will most likely never work in the industry again so I pray to God that they don't go the same way.
What would you come home and say to your wife and family if it was you?

Dai rear, might I suggest that you do some research before posting your ill considered insinuations about the 747 incident.
Alcohol was not a factor.

Aztruck,

I don't think Dai Rear is insinuating alcohol in his post reference the 747 incident, merely referring to how he was treated/lynched afterwards.....with a tragic outcome.

stange that you should say that
 

I never insinuated anything – on the contrary I displayed consideration and graciousness.
I never said that alcohol was a factor.
I stated clearly that I could not remember exact details.
If I had ; it is a rumour site.

Dai Rear.

Putting my mod hat on I think you have only yourself to blame, and aztruck may have a point.

The title of thread refers to a crew testing positive for alcohol. Putting your comments about the unfortunate incident at LHR on the same thread infers that it was perhaps alcohol related. Which it certainly was not. Rumour has nothing to do with it. It was thoroughly investigated by the CAA and a positive conclusion made.

The outcome however, was very sad indeed.

See the point?

PPP

And still people seem to have their heads in the sand.

You don't resign if you are not guilty. You use the not-inconsiderable legal resources available to you through BALPA and you fight.

The fact that BA were clearly going to terminate them with no compensation, and that they didn't put up any fight at all, tells you all you need to know. They clearly accepted that they were guilty, and the subsequent events indicate that they accepted that they were guilty of a lot more than having trace amounts of alcohol in their bloodstream in a zero-tolerance country.

I feel sorry for them personally,, but frankly the industry is better off without people who have such poor professional judgement.

Level playing fields
 

PPRuNe Pop,
No, I don’t accept that. I have been totally up-front. For the second time, I haven’t insinuated anything. If PPRuNe Pop wishes to be consistent with your own argument, then you have to go through this entire web page, look at and scrutinise every individual entry from every member, and offer the same chastisement to every one who has deviated from the main thread of the heading. Good luck!
I see that PPRuNe Pop has 122 entries on this web page, many of which have nothing to do with the main category under which they were originally listed. Similarly, Aztruck has 101 entries and the same applies. Check for yourself. Sauce for the goose comes to mind.
I am surprised about educated professional people attacking other similar colleagues accusing them of saying something that they have gone to great lengths to clarify and state that they are not saying at all.
If you really find my remarks out of order, despite my clarifications, then you should click on the hyperlink at the bottom right “Report this to a moderator” and insist in the strongest possible terms that I either categorically withdraw my remarks, capitulate humbly, and offer a grovelling apology, or be struck off. If this is unsuccessful, then you could resign your own membership of this web page in a fit of pique and insist that all your supporters do the same.
To those who are really thick and/or are on a self-righteous pilgrimage, please permit me to be crystal clear. My sympathies are to the poor blokes – them and their families - who have made some sort of error of judgement and who have lost their livelihood and/or paid the highest price.
There but for the grace of God . . . .
I think that they deserve better. They won’t get it from BA.

Dai Rear,

I agree with you...a case of RTFQ, I think. I knew the 747 Captain involved. A tragic waste of a human life brought about by poor company procedures for dealing with people who get themselves in trouble for WHATEVER reason.

Interesting bit of insider stuff. I understand that resigning, the guys protect their pension and notice payments. Not much for the FO, but serious money for the Captain . I also heard from an inside source that , as Visual has already posted,after tendering their resignations, the Norwegian medical results came back showing a blood level result of ZERO !!!!!

The Norwegians have requested that the pilots return for further tests. I assume they've been told where to go.

0

Zero


Zero Alcohol in blood test.


Yes that's what the results have come back as.

Yet this thread goes to show how big a bunch of two faced shysters are out there. Plenty of so-called "professional" colleagues out there have acted as judge, juror and executioner before any evidence was produced.

Visual, naieve, am I? It seems you changed your tune a little since your earlier post. Maybe the answer to your question might lie in being blackmailed over pension entitlements, bullying, or perhaps in having had more than enough hurt done to him by all those around. Who knows? Personally I wouldn't want to work either for or alongside those who have cast so many aspertions over my professionalism, and let's face it, a lot of people have been quoted in the papers recently.

As for the hacks that crawl through these forums after a heavy session, looking for some tripe to assemble through a drunken haze, you are the lowest of the low. Not a chance you will be filling the front page headlines with the truth of the matter. Not a chance.

key word
 

To PPRuNe Pop,
your earler attack on me . . . . .
"Putting your comments about the unfortunate incident at LHR on the same thread infers that it was perhaps alcohol related."
The key word here is 'perhaps.'
Aren't you sure?

Visual

If (a very big if, coming from a paper) there was zero alcohol in the blood- why did he resign? Would you, if you knew you were completely innocent? I wouldn't. I'd use BALPA and fight.

The captain might have gained something if he was offered his pension and a notice payment, but the FO would have gained little, considering what he has given up.

For both of them, there are various remedies open to them if they are indeed innocent.

If they knew their blood alcohol was zero, and the Norwegians agree, BA have no basis for asking for their resignations and that could easily be reversed- either as part of the internal disciplinary procedure, or later in an Industrial Tribunal. I rather doubt that BA would try to get rid of them if they were not satisfied that the allegations were substantially true.

As I said before, the fact they resigned so quickly tells its own story.

You obviously don't know BA very well MOR. There are plenty of things they could sack the Captain even with a zero blood test. They'd throw every rule in the book at him until they could fnid something that stuck, then they'd fire him, then he'd have to go to an industrial tribunal, and even if he won BA are still not required to re-employ him and it would require industrial action by the pilots to force his reinstatement. Perhaps he simply decided it wasn't worth all the stress, especially as the last guy who went through the tribunal process dropped dead as a result of the stress.

So some of you are saying that it is possible that any BA employee who has it in for another BA employee can report them for possible alcohol abuse and those accused will have to resign or suffer the terrible consequences, even when it can be proven that they were never guilty of alcohol abuse? Because if no disciplinary action is brought against those who make false accusations, that is what you are implying.

That is rather sobering thought...no pun intended.
Time for a rethink of company attitude?

Carnage Matey

No, sorry, I don't wear that at all. It is probably fair to assume that other than this allegation, BA had no grievance with the Captain. If they did, the obvious question is why they hadn't dealt with it before.

The only way they could sack them immediately would be to show gross misconduct.

It is also obviously in BAs interest to show that the allegations were baseless to begin with. They too have essentially admitted
that the pilots were in fact over the limit, which is a serious failure on their part as well.

I have been to an Industrial Tribunal, they are designed to be non-threatening and the experience is hardly traumatic- certainly not as traumatic as losing your career with no compensation.

No, they did a deal along the lines of "go now and you get a tiny bit of recompense, make us sack you and you get nothing".

The fact that these guys rolled over so easily tells any future employer that they are guilty as charged, whatever the truth might be.

You have great, and completely misplaced, faith in BA human resources chaps! I'll speculate wildly here, but if it did happen to be the case that the Captain was clean, and it did happen to be the case that the FO missed his pick-up, and it did happen to be the case that the FO was obviously worse for wear, do you think BA would let the Captain who took him flying get away scot free? Not a hope in hell.They'll call that gross misconduct just for a start.

Why do you assume its fair to say BA had no grievance with this Captain? Do you know him? Those within the company say there's evidence that BA already did have a previous grievance with him. BA management have grievances with lots of people, and when they can't get them on technical breaches of the rule they criticise them for the entirely subjective crime of 'poor handling of the situation'. Its always happened, it's still happening and purportedly there was already one resignation in the pipeline from one disgusted Captain prior to this event.

BAs interest is to bury the story as quickly as possible, not to debunk the story. Did we see any official company rebuttal of the Dispatches program with its many fictitious claims? No. What we saw were people strung up by the company, including two guys who were actually sacked for no wrongdoing and later reinstated on appeal.

On the subject of false accusations, many people in BA are falsely accused of many things by their colleagues every year, from aclohol abuse to sexual harassament to racism to bullying to theft. I've personally known two people subjected to false allegations. They were stood down from flying, with associated loss of flying pay, whilst the allegations were investigated and found to be unfounded. Both accusers continued to fly and received no punishment.