That Was The Week That Was,14-18 February 2022
High Wind, High Wages, High Noon
That Was The Week That Was 14-18 February 2022
High Wind, High Wages, High Noon
It is fair to say that Big Jets TV Live took the internet, and Twitter, by storm on Friday – quite literally. If you have not seen about eight hours of jets attempting to land at Heathrow in the height of Storm Eunice, you have a treat in store. If you like that sort of thing. Pilots were lauded for their, what… bravery? Stupidity? Daring do? In most cases it was not for their skill, because by any measure, if you were a passenger on these aircraft, you would have felt extremely scared and unwell.
Unless, of course, you rate any landing you walk away from as a successful landing.
That must be the measure that the pilot community, and various others scared by the fancy hats that pilots wear, took to saying. Passengers clapped on landing (even if after a go-around) in what must be the finest example of the Stockholm Syndrome in recorded captivity. Why? These men and women either put the passengers’ life at risk or scared the hell out of them. Unless, as I say, you think that any landing you walk away from…
The calls for giving the pilots medals and the most spacious argument of them all, that we pay them to make those landings despite 9,999 of the 10,000 landings that they do are nothing at all like that, grew during the day. What is wrong with this picture? Everyone else got on with their jobs. Speak to the controllers. They had a very difficult day. No tea and medals all round for them. It was awful in the terminal as well. Again, now mention of medals – or heaven forfend – a pay raise for the check-in and ground handling agents. Ha!
No, yet again, the pilots and their various associations were out noting the great job their members did, putting their passengers in harm’s way. What are they – US postal workers? ‘Neither snow nor rain nor gloom of night stays these couriers from their appointed rounds’ is the unofficial motto of the US Postal service. The pilots will no doubt be throwing their weight behind pay raises for them too. Oh, wait, no, perhaps not.
If watching big jets yawl and roll is not entertaining enough, you might be interested to watch a report of a few Qantas A380 pilots, one of whom flew the last A380 to the dessert in Arizona, as they try to find new employment. Ever so appropriately, they became bus drivers. Well, they would, wouldn’t they? The most telling bit? One of them notes that YOU HAVE TO PAY ATTENTION ALL THE TIME! Bless. And on about a fiftieth of the pay.
So, if, as the pilots say, this is why we pay them the big bucks, surely we need to look again. Instead of paying them for 10,000 landing on the basis that one of them is hard, why not pay them what attention-paying bus drivers get, and when there is a big day, like a Storm Eunice, pay them more – if they walk away. This plan, a payment system per safe landing, could then be extended to the ATM controllers too. Let’s pay them per safe landing too. That will see the capacity at airports go up.