Well, it seems saving 150 lives and being praised by the PM is bad for your CV.

Sky clicky

The Pilot has been turned down for a job because of the 'incident' and he is currently on Jobseekers.

So, his quick thinking and action which averted what could have been a horrendous disaster doesn’t count for him positively? He saved lives, not endangered them.

He'll still get a job somewhere else, he's just fallen foul of one particular airline's policies. Given he'd have got a massive paycheque when taking voluntary redundancy and "Mrs Burkill added that her husband was confident of finding a flying job in the coming months and was considering giving after-dinner speeches in the meantime." I doubt very much if he'll have any problem paying the bills really.

Mind you, not much of a speech in it - "So this plane lost power and I landed it in one piece. Thank you very much, try the veal"

Jon

What confused me was that he's on jobseekers. Surely he must have savings which would prevent him being eligible, I mean it's only a couple of grand or something before you can't receive it.

Unless it's all tied up of course...

Anyways, the news of it all is certainly a good advertisement for him to any potential employers.

You are eligible for "contribution based" allowance if you've paid enough into the system. It only lasts 6 months though, and you're not entitled to any other benefits such as free prescriptions or council tax rebate.

He took voluntary redundancy. That would make him ineligible for an initial period I think. As I say though, voluntary redundancy schemes generally come with a 'settlement payment' to go with them. If he's been a pilot for a good number of years, he could be looking a a lump sum roughly equivalent to a year's pay. Which I'd imagine, for an airline flight crew captain, is a pretty fair sum. Plus if you look at it, a fair lump of your personal expenses are actually to do with getting to and from and doing work so it would actually go further than if he was actually was still doing the job.
As I say, I doubt he's actually taking JSA because he needs to, he's taking it because he can. if he's still not flying in say 8 month's time then maybe we should start worrying for him.

Jon

I have no idea if the "voluntary" aspect makes a difference. It makes perfect sense, but I don't recall reading anything about it during my fairly recent and less volentary experience. However, the social services website is very disjointed and I found it quite tricky to locate the correct information. Luckily, I had plenty of time to look...


I suspect they'd be fine for a lot longer than that, unless they're mortgaged to the hilt. The lady of the house didn't sound overly concerned though, so neither should we be.

The story is more interesting because of the airline's policy. Like many policies, it was clearly written by someone who didn't comprehensively understand the impact of the rules they invented. In other words, typical middle-management *grumble grumble grumble*.

The airline had a zero tolerance attitude to "incidents". Which is crazy because it would place him behind a rookie pilot with barely any flying experience. I would rather a pilot who did not freeze during a problem, rather than a completely inexperienced pilot. Many pilots do such training in simulators but it is not the same as a real event.

Such admirable qualities are difficult to quantify.

It reminds me of a conversation I had with "middle management" in my previous employ.

Me: "You do understand that your statistics actually reward lazy engineers and penalise efficient ones?"
Them: "But we have to measure something in order to be accountable."
Me: "So you'd rather use an system based on flawed logic which has a negative impact on the company, than simply rely on a supervisors opinion?"
Them: "Yes."

When I remember stuff like that, I feel so lucky to be working where I am now. There's no "middle management" and I haven't seen a power point presentation since I've been here.

I have experience of many middle managers, and some are good some are appalling. If they meet their targets they feel safe. Regardless of what the impact is to the company overall. Just look at the banks for further evidence of that.