A company not to consider working for
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Two drunken RIM executives on a flight to China fought staff and then chewed through their restraints after being subdued, forcing the pilots to divert the plane. The two boarded a flight from Toronto to Beijing already drunk, according to documents obtained by CBC News, and proceeded to badger attendants for more booze once …
Apologies if this has been posted already. From the linked article:
"The two men were on a week-long business trip for the BlackBerry maker, but they were arrested after the flight landed in Vancouver."
Eejits got what was coming to them. I feel sorry for all the passengers that pair of oxygen thieves inconvenienced.
Some companies have employment conditions that state
"When you are on a company business away from the office, you are a representative of the company, and must act with appropriate decorum at all times. This includes when you are relaxing in the hotel away from the client/customer/supplier".
Howe legally enforcible such conditions are, is a different matter.
Why? OK when on company business your behaviour is a reflection on the company you work for but in this sort of extreme circumstance I cannot begin to imagine RIM standing up for these two complete and utter arseholes.
They are dicks, plain and simple. I think most people would agree, they brought more shame on themselves than their company.
I believe there is (or was) a procedure for opening the doors on a 747 in flight. You'd obviously have to equalise the pressure, so either at lower altitude or let loose the rubber jungle.
It was a proposed method for removing smoke from the cabin, where one front door and one rear door would be opened slightly to let air blow through.
When you're airborne the Jurisdiction that the plane started in is generally the laws that govern it. Once the wheels touch the ground the law is the law wherever the plane is. They'd have most likely been fined here too. Ive never heard of anyone who didn't plead guilty being imprisoned. And in that sort of situation, you're pretty clearly guilty.
>When you're airborne the Jurisdiction that the plane started in is generally the laws that govern it. >Once the wheels touch the ground the law is the law wherever the plane is.
I suggest you read up on the Tokyo Convention, Sir.
The jurisdiciton is that of the state where the aircraft is REGISTERED. If the commander elects to divert and make a forced landing then registered jurisdiction continues until such point as the local authorities take over jurisdiction should they wish to do so (although I'm no lawyer, I belive this takeover does not prevent the registered authoritiy from prosecuting should they wish to).
You tend to find the biggest companies do have that sort of attitude. It's sometimes the only way to get people to go the extra mile for a project.
When the first iPhone was being developed people resigned and rejoined the company, pulled all-nighters and a female boss got wound up so much she slammed a door so hard it wouldn't open again. The stakes were high.
You can make your choice, go work for a company with big rewards but lots of demand or one where you can just bumble along and probably ultimately fail?
I would have loved to be on that flight with a big tub of buttered popcorn and a diet Pepsi watching these suited ( I assume) grown men chewing off their plastic hand cuffs so that they could lay down in the aisle and throw a kicking, whining tantrum, while occasionally getting up to pee against the bulkhead.
This is what you get when your phones have no applications for them to play with, they drink.
Ego iPhones users drink less than Blackberry users, obvious logic.
Bound to be a few jokes in this as well. A Windows phone user a Apple phone user and a Blackberry user get onto a plane, who gets off first?
One aspect, they said that they were both drunk upon getting aboard the plane; Now isn't it the operators resopnsibility to make sure that nobody drunk gets onto a plane - little bit of a shared blame here though. That said there are two types of people - those that can suffer in silence and then there are complete prats who represent companies making lots of mistakes at the expense of the poor sod's doing the real work.
If I was in charge of RIM I'd not sack them, I'd demonte them to permanant teaboys searving the working staff and paid min wage.
Over the Atlantic the winds have enough influence that it can be worth departing significantly from the great circle route to benefit from a tailwind or avoid a headwind. I've had a very northerly routeing before now due to this. Weather over NW Canada might have contributed to the actual flight path.
The great circle route involves flying over the north poles, which not all aircraft are capable of doing. Only aircraft fitted with a self contained navigation system can fly polar routes, all other forms of navigation system are reliant on magnetism for navigation, which becomes unreliable once you approach the north/south poles.
Searching the Air Canada website, it looks like they use a 777-300ER on the direct flight, but 767-300's from Toronto. The 777 should have no problems, but the 767 cannot fly a polar route. It may be the case that the flight was operated by a 767 when this incident took place.
From the Boeing website:
If an active route takes an airplane over a pole, the preferred mode is lateral navigation with the autopilot engaged. The flight management system (FMS) on the 747 and the 777 are operational in the polar areas with no restrictions. The 757 and 767 flight management computer (FMC) and the 757 and 767 Pegasus FMC are operational to 87 deg north latitude and 87 deg south latitude because of airplane certification restrictions. The MD-11 FMS is considered to be in the polar region when the airplane is above 85 deg north or south latitude. (See “Polar Route Navigation by Airplane Model.”)
http://boeing.com/commercial/aeromagazine/aero_16/polar_story.html#4
As others have mentioned, winds may also have affected the flights route.
How is it that there are more and more incidents like this which feature supposedly intelligent people?
I can be an idiot but you'd never see me do anything like this, drunk or not. The most action you'd see from me during a flight where I was drunk would be to offload fluid in the toilet.
Maybe it's just that I know how to behave and can handle my sherry.
My personal viewpoint is that this should not reflect on RIM no matter what. These people don't need managing or telling how to behave (or they shouldn't) so how can we hold the falling messaging manufacturer responsible? The people are. Period.
I can't believe that this level of loutishness just pops up out of the blue. Bad drunks are always bad drunks, and behave like that on most outings, until they swear off alcohol completely (and these guys obviously had not gone tee-total yet, though they might now).
In other words, it's very likely that RIM knew about these guys' bad habits. They just didn't act on that knowledge until there was a headline-grabbing plane incident. So it does reflect badly on RIM, albeit in a minor way.