{"id":1275,"date":"2022-02-20T22:15:16","date_gmt":"2022-02-20T20:15:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/?p=1275"},"modified":"2022-02-21T12:21:26","modified_gmt":"2022-02-21T10:21:26","slug":"that-was-the-week-that-was-14-18-february-2022","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/?p=1275","title":{"rendered":"That Was The Week That Was,14-18 February 2022"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

High Wind, High Wages, High Noon<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That Was The Week That Was 14-18 February 2022<\/p>\n\n\n\n

High Wind, High Wages, High Noon<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is fair to say that Big Jets TV Live<\/a> took the internet, and Twitter, by storm on Friday \u2013 quite literally.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 If you like that sort of thing.\u00a0\u00a0 Pilots were lauded for their, what\u2026 bravery?\u00a0 Stupidity?\u00a0 Daring do?\u00a0 \u00a0In 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unless, of course, you rate any landing you walk away from as a successful landing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019 life at risk or scared the hell out of them.  Unless, as I say, you think that any landing you walk away from\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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 \u2013 or heaven forfend \u2013 a pay raise for the check-in and ground handling agents.  Ha!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No, yet again, the pilots and their various associations were out noting the great job their members did, putting their passengers in harm\u2019s way.  What are they \u2013 US postal workers?  \u2018Neither snow nor rain nor gloom of night stays these couriers from their appointed rounds\u2019 is the unofficial motto<\/a> 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If watching big jets yawl and roll is not entertaining enough, you might be interested to watch a report<\/a> 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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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 \u2013 if they walk away.  This plan, a payment system per safe landing, could then be extended to the ATM controllers too.  Let\u2019s pay them per safe landing too.  That will see the capacity at airports go up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 \u2013 quite literally.\u00a0 If you have not seen about eight hours of jets attempting to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,11,18,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-airlines","category-airports","category-safety","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1275"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1275\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1281,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1275\/revisions\/1281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}