Wouldn't it be a shame if someone accidentally posted the email address of MyTravel executives here and we accidentally sent them mail complaining of their over zealous politically corectness gone mad?

Surely kids are shown the flight deck all the time or is that something else that's a thing of the past in this increasingly po-faced world?

(as there's a hint of Airplane about this I feel compelled to add "and don't call me Shirley")

A colleague of my brother-in-law (who has been for 30-odd years a commercial pilot) in the heady days of 2002 made an incautious choice of comments to a checkpoint guard. He had some pointlessly forbidden item - a nail file, or razor, or some such - while passing through the pilot's check, and made the mistake of arguing with the jobsworth in question by pointing out that if he was interested in terrorism, not only did the pilot's cabin contain a large fire axe but that, as the pilot, he didn't need sharp objects to crash the plane. He was arrested and sacked without any form of appeal.

Come on, common sense if the best guard against terrorism.

Is "a terrorist" going to be a premiership footballer invited up to the cabin by the captain on a plane full of friends and team mates, or is it going to be an unknown forcing their way up with guns aboard a public flight with 100s of people they don't know.

Unbelievable.

"We have a zero tolerance policy towards any actions which could endanger the safety of our passengers and employees."

In that case how do they justify taking off?

Again, the Red Tape has saved us from a terror attack.

I'll sleep more soundly now.

I have just sent this email to feedback@mytravel.co.uk :

Dear Sir or Madam

I am writing to inform MyTravel of my disgust in the treatment of your

former pilot Pablo Mason. To sack a pilot for allowing someone to

conquer their fear of flying is an outrage. It is absurd to suggest

that anyone's safety was jeopardised by allowing a well known

personality into the cockpit on a private charter flight. The irony

that the pilot, sacked on the grounds of 'anti-terror' rules, should

be a Gulf War veteran is a fine one indeed

This has tarnished the already shaky image of MyTravel and you have

done yourselves no favours in meting out this draconian punishment.

Please ensure this email is passed on to MyTravel management.

Surely it was not the pilot who told them about this.

Captain Mason: You ever been in a cockpit before?

Robbie Savage: No sir, I've never been up in a plane before.

Captain Mason: You ever seen a grown man naked?

Sorry, I couldn't resist it. I'll get my coat.

"...actions which could endanger..."

I know Robby lives up to his name in his professional career, but if he was minded to stick up for the friendly PIC, couldn't he sue for defamation? Basically the airline have accused him of being a terrorist.

Long gone are the days when anyone who wanted was invited up to the cockpit for a tour by the friendly captain. These days travelling by commercial airlines is one of the worst experiences you can subject yourself too, from the ridiculous overbearing security at airports, massive invasions of privacy (passenger flight data sent god knows where, being finger printed in the US and soon to be Terminal 5), then spending hours stuck in cramped seats before going through it all again at the other end.

If you want to look out of the front of a plane and really enjoy the experience of flying, get yourself along to your nearest general aviation airfield, for a pleasure flight or a trial lesson. You'll never want to go near a spam can airliner again.

I recommend reading Pablo Mason's autobiography - he's a bit of a living legend and there are some good tales from his more impulsive years in the RAF. I especially liked the following episode, which I may or not be remembering 100% accurately.

While enjoying a nerve-calming beverage in the Officers' Mess bar after a particularly life-threatening front-line mission, he was requested by a desk-jockey officer to go and change from his flying gear as it was now after 6pm (a usual rule of etiquette). Being more than a little wound up, Mason reacted by loosing off a few rounds of his service pistol into the ceiling of the Officers' Mess.

I'm guessing the good folks at MyTravel were not aware of this before disciplining him...

said footballer has recently converted to a fundamentalist brand of insanity and decides to crash the plane?

OK, so we all make the tacit assumption that someone who earns millions a year for kicking a small round thing about a big green thing with his friends isn't about to top himself, but there's plenty of evidence to put the lie to that.

Richand successful people go off the rails all the time. I'd rather they didn't do it while they are in the cockpit of a plane.

(Obviously, I'm just playing devil's advocate here, but the point is good)

MyTravel executive email address?

Personal addresses are hard to find, but a quick look at their web site (http://www.mytravel.com/) shows a few others:

pretravelservices@mytravel.co.uk

customerservices@mytravel.co.uk

feedback@mytravel.co.uk

They are also part of the Thomas Cook group, so there's probably more addresses you can find there.

Fire away!

"While enjoying a nerve-calming beverage in the Officers' Mess bar after a particularly life-threatening front-line mission, he was requested by a desk-jockey officer to go and change from his flying gear as it was now after 6pm (a usual rule of etiquette). Being more than a little wound up, Mason reacted by loosing off a few rounds of his service pistol into the ceiling of the Officers' Mess."

Clearly removing this dangerous and highly disturbed individual from the cockpit of a commercial airliner is in everyone's interest...

Just hope he didn't have the fish...

George Bush and Tony Blair (yes I know he's not there any more - if he ever was) have won another one. Let's scare the bejesus out of everyone and use propaganda as much as possible to do so and get them to allow us to do anything they want.

The poor airline was probably scared of the Septics calling them terrorists if they didn't sack the pilot. I don't think they fancied the idea of a Yank coming up behind them in a fighter with a black and white telly in it and blowing them out of the sky all in the name of "friendly fire". So can't blame them really.

It's not the airline fault, it's the governments putting in dumb-arsed, half-cocked scaremongering, bullsh*t laws. All politicians are only interested in getting more control over people and terrorism is the perfect answer. Watch out, they'll soon be watching to see how many times you take a dump. Have more than one dump a day and you be branded a terrorist for trying to overload the sewage system. Make sure you put that cork up your arse.

<i>"We have a zero tolerance policy towards any actions which could endanger the safety of our passengers and employees."</i>

If they're going to take it so literally, why are they allowing pilots to take off at all?!

Can someone PLEASE get started on an EU-directive which says that ALL laws, and ALL company policies should include the phrase "Nothing in the above law/rules should hinder any person from applying sane mind to the usage of these laws".

And, please, please, make brainless bureaucracy illegal and punishable by disintegration. Please?

//Svein

"About 20 years ago, flying into Switzerland on a commercial airliner, I asked if I could have a look in the cockpit. After all, I was a 12 years old and curious.

The captain agreed and even invited me to stay in the cockpit during landing. It was a great experience for me.

Nowadays the captain would lose his job, and I'd be declared a terrorist just for asking.

Any surprise then that I think the terrorists have already won?"

Indeed, I'm glad I got to visit the cockpit of a 757 we were in on the way back from Russia in 98 or 99. It's a shame about the current state of things really...

Yes, I too went up to the cockpit, on a BA flight to Milan in the early 90's - looked very cramped for the crew !

The pilot even tilted the plane so we could all get a good look at the Mont Blanc glacier.

I couldn't help thinking that all schoolchildren should have that kind of experience for their appreciation of geography ... the 'ripples' in the regions on either side of the Alps was a clear indicator of side-effects of mountain-building.

A Mytravel spokesman said: "We have a zero tolerance policy towards any actions which could endanger the safety of our passengers and employees."

How dare these suits at Mytravel pass judgement on a man who has had probably had to make life-threatening decisions for breakfast in his military career. What a bunch of utter, utter wankers. They are indeed hiding behind the catch all of "zero tolerance" (aka "phew, we can outsource our thinking to someone who gives a fuck, thank god for that, it was hurting our brains")

This is another example of the Big Babies syndrome which increasingly permeates every breathing space in society these days.

http://www.thebookbag.co.uk/bywaterbig.htm

Wasn't there a Russian airliner that went down basically because of kids in the cockpit ? (granted as always, combined with a dozen other mistakes).

It might not make a difference but I dropped them an email and I will avoid traveling with them in future.

A serious lack of common sense is more hazardous to my health than the likelihood of any terrorist attacking me (What are the actual odds of a terrorist attack? I think people have lost their way...)

Does anyone know if this double-decker plane has windows at the front of the top deck where people could pretend to be the driver, I mean pilot? Or would it scare the fundament out of people during landing.

They could even put in a mock-up of the cockpit on the top level and give kids (including 34 year olds) a chance to have a play, while the real crew and controls were left in peace. Or use it as a decoy for terrorists, allowing the crew to lock them in and depressurise it.

It is not the overpaid celebrity living in luxury that has any chance of going over the top and creating havoc and terror ending with multiple deaths.

No. The men living in luxury are much more likely to hire poor blokes living in abject misery, fill their heads with lies and nonsense about a magnificent Afterlife, and give them detonators and explosives so that they - the poor - go and snuff themselves voluntarily whilst creating havoc that end in Zero Tolerance rules that have an adverse effect on the rest of the world's sane people.

Bin Laden controls hundreds of millions of dollars, do you see him walking around with a belt of explosives ? Of course not.

Not that this is in any way a comment on the life and ways of that celebrity that is the involuntary cause of all the ruckus. It's just that it is highly unlikely that a man who can afford the luxuries of life is going to be the one to cause a terrorist scare. We are all creatures of comfort, after all. There are very few conflicts in our history that cannot be traced to the lack, or perceived lack, of some essential commodity. The conflicts simply grow bigger if the lack is more important.

if so, i demand he be fired for letting el reg enter and stay on the flight deck.

Robbie Savage???? Star?????

FFS

Agree with the "zero tolerance = zero intelligence" comment.

As a former charter pilot I can tell you that we let people touch the control regularly.

You have Crew that is responsible for the safety of the aircraft. They make split second decisions every day. Mostly whether they want milk in their coffee... But they do make important safety decisions, and carry responsibility for them. Now, letting someone into the cockpit is a time honoured tradition and staves off the mind-numbing boredom of a long flight, because the truth is that during the cruise part of the flight, the pilots are just trying not to get bored to tears. They enjoy the company, and enjoy trying to help someone (like with fear of flying).

Sacking him over this just means that they do not trust their crews to make decisions, which means the crews should not be flying at all. That company should be running hot dog stands, not an airline.

To all of the above whining about the injustice of all of this, please help out the airline industry by rewriting the rules of who is and is not allowed on the control deck of a commercial aircraft while in flight. (I know, I know, actually contributing to the answer instead of just making smartarse comments or whining sounds a little like work but, come on, it might be fun.)

I'll start you off: "Only active flight crew is allowed - except:

Semi-famous sports personalities

Really good friends of the pilot

Really good friends of really good friends of the pilot

The pilot's grannie.

Really good friends of the pilot's grannie

People who once met the pilot's grannie

Yes, I am very much in favor of the 'no-one except the active flight crew' and I am very much in favor of the 'break this rule and you're fired' protocol. Just as I'm very much in favor of finishing my air travel simply uncomfortable and pissed-off but not actually dead.

There was indeed a Russian airliner that went down as a result of school children in the cockpit. However said children were related to the pilot (or co-pilot, can't remember), in the pilot's chair and in fact the entire escapade could have been avoided quite easily had any of the crew remembered that there is a fail-safe device in the auto-pilot that makes it so the auto-pilot will disengage if the pilot attempts to bank the airplane more then a certain amount of degrees.

Had the pilots realised this, instead of trying to find out why they were banking further and further, they could have simply straightened the airplane out straight away and reenabled the auto-pilot.

There was also a case of pure idiocy, again at the hands of Russian pilots, which disregarded their collusion avoidance system and flew directly into another airplane at the instruction of the ATC, who was instructing the Russian airplane to descend, while the collision avoidance system was telling them to pull up. At the same time, the other airplane reported going into a descent because of their collision avoidance system alerting them of another airplane in their vicinity.

That's why the regulations now specifically state that said collision avoidance system's instructions are to be followed even if they contradict ATC instructions.

Yes, there isn't much room in a cockpit -- they used to have jump seats for spare crew members but they don't allow anyone up front these days so I doubt if the space is still available.

Aviation is currently a nasty, potentially life-threatening experience. (Ask the husband of the lady who died recently in Phoenix after being 'restrained' due to complaining too loudly). Its the epitome of everything that's wrong with modern society, from the airports full of goons armed to the teeth (as if firing weapons in a crowded terminal would be a smart thing to do), lousy customer service enforced with a 'complain and we'll treat you like a terrorist', airplanes that are nasty to fly in -- the whole thing's a crock. The aviation professionals work with a metaphorical gun to their heads, the livelyhood at risk from any bureaucrat's whim. The people making the rules aren't affected by this -- you little people probably don't know this, but First Class is more or less extinct, its been replaced by fractional and charter where you don't have the delays, the threats, the general nastiness.

I suppose its a metaphor for life, isn't it? Big Bro' needs control.

@ Jeffypoo

IIRC the kids weren't just in the cockpit but in control of the plane... after disengaging the autopilot. I think one of the last sounds on the voice recorder was the pilot getting back in his seat!

@ John A Blackley

Get a grip man, this wasn't yer average flight. It was a charter with rich people on board so it was pretty likely that no-one was going to do anything adverse. Maybe you should invest in a large amount of cotton wool for your next foray in to the outside world...