Monday, March 6, 2017

Doofus update

A month ago I posted on a bored RAF pilot who almost crashed his plane:
Post title shamelessly stolen from Peter.  "Bored" RAF Pilot sent 187 passengers into a nose dive while playing with his camera:
A bored RAF pilot flying nearly 200 service personnel to Afghanistan sent his passenger jet into a nosedive when a camera he had been playing with jammed the flight controls, a court martial heard. 
Well it turns out that military justice is much swifter than its civilian counterpart:
The Royal Air Force officer who sent his Airbus Voyager into an accidental dive from 33,000 feet, injuring passengers and crew, has been dismissed and given a suspended prison sentence. 
... 
Prosecutor Nigel Lickley QC told the court martial that Townshend’s actions cost the RAF almost a million pounds: £207,000 on repairs to the aircraft, tail number ZZ333, and £827,000 on chartered civilian aircraft to replace the rest of the RAF Voyager fleet for the 13 days they were all grounded as a safety precaution.
I can't say that I blame the RAF.

2 comments:

Glen Filthie said...

Everyone loses.

Pilots like that have usually wracked up thousands of hours and have cost millions to train. It's too bad that he got cocky and overconfident.

Will said...

Glen,
he lied about the cause of the incident. THAT is why he got cashiered. It took an expensive investigation to ascertain it wasn't the planes' fault. He was stupid and arrogant, and paid the price. He was stupid, because he thought they wouldn't figure out HE was the problem. You have to be a particularly stupid person (especially a PILOT) to think you could pull that off.