Flamboyant Pilot is not an oxymoron

There's news today about a pilot who lost his job from My Travel the UK charter airline after allowing a footballer onto the flight deck on a return flight with the Blackburn Rovers. It was apparently to help allay the players fears of flying but it was against company regulations and it got the pilot sacked for breaching anti-terrorist regulations. While the footballer in question my have had a bit of a reputation as a hard tackler it seems to be stretching credibility to use the inflight hijacking rules in such a way. Read on in the reports and the pilot in question was on a final written warning from the airline over an incident at security in Birmingham airport. He stripped to his underwear after what appears to have been an over zealous security check. No one complained but the airline handed out a written warning but has now agreed he had been provoked by the security people.

On the plus side he had received more commendations from the public than any other pilot in the company. It seems that the ex-RAF fighter pilot is certainly larger than life but where's the harm in that? In a world where regulations are suppressing all the colour out of life it's just one more nail in the coffin of flamboyant characters – the airline industry was once full of them. . .I must be getting old.