That Was The Week That Was 02 – 06 October 2023
Pilots: Give Feet the Boot
If you are feeling down, or in need of joy, you can never, ever do better than google the phrase Qantas pilots bus drivers. Wade through the pro-pilot crap that is out there, about how such a career move makes them cry etc (because pilots are an emotional bunch that will always support team over-paid-and-underworked and burst into tears) and get to the report by an Australian news programme called ‘The Project’. Go on, do it now. Or, if pilot-like, you want others to do the work for you, here is the link. The best bit, the best bit by far, is an admission by a very senior ex-A380 pilot that being a bus driver is hard because, and I am not making this bit up, ‘you have to concentrate all the time’. For the rest of us, we call that ‘going to work’, but not pilots.
No, instead of working, pilots are apparently doing things like stalking a woman, from their aeroplane. Again, not made up. This time, I will spare you the awkward look away as if you ever, ever, intended to look this one up on the internet. Here is the link. See, it is a real story. But perhaps the best bit about this story is that the pilot has been ordered to stay 300 feet from the house of his victim. The paper, very kindly, translates 300 foot into something of meaningful value, in this case 91 metres. That is really low-level flying because it is less than two lengths of a pool. How else does this measure make sense to anyone?
But, amazingly, for pilots, the measure of a foot remains salient. Pilots measure their altitude in feet. Well, they would, wouldn’t they? Feet. No, really. In the US and in some pockets of Brexit Britan this measure makes some sort of sense – for the viewers at home, a foot is near enough 30 centimetres. What a ridiculous measure. There are more stupid measures. Temperature that says freezing is 32 degrees for example. But I digress.
My trouble with using feet is that it is neither here or there, neither fish nor fowl. Feet as a measure was standardised only in 1959, by noting that a foot was 0.3048 metres. So to use feet as a measure is to acknowledge that you are being silly. Officially. Oh, wait, we are talking about pilots here, so I withdraw that. But nonetheless, Qantas’ senior A380 pilot admitted that paying attention was not one of the more important tasks pilots have – no, that is walking through the airport with the funny hat on looking superior and talking to passengers with your back to them, whilst using that condescending voice. But with all that time on their hands (and I assume, their feet) considering better measurement systems is as good a hobby as you can suggest.
Feet as a measure has a fine history, linked almost entirely to monarchs and their pedal extremities. Clearly, a sensible system for measurement. But by no means was it the first of all measures used. So, if pilots want to be seen as sensible, scientific and up-to-date they might like to think about metres. Or, if they want to be seen as traditionalists and up keepers of history and process, and oh, do pilots like to be seen as up keepers of history and process, they must give feet the boot. They must go back to the original, biblical measure. They must start to measure things in cubits. Nothing else will do. Cubits rule, and I say that by a country 3,520 cubits.