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.
I always thought that people just like getting drunk at any opportunity, especially if it's free. I am now told there is more to it than that and the stag parties I see wearing blue wigs at Stansted Airport at 10 in the morning with tickets to Bratislava holding a pint of Stella each are really just afraid of flying!
MOST people respond to a bit of drink by becoming more accommodating, more forgiving, and more likely to stay quietly in their seats and pass the time in a slightly garrulous fuzziness. Some small number of folks don't respond that way or cannot stop themselves at one, two, or three, and those are the ones that make the news.
Because you need to drink if you are terrified of flying for one.
I drink large amounts on planes to ease the journey. Without it I probably couldn't fly at all, and I've been prescribed drugs for it too, they don't help. Mind you, I know to sit in my seat and stay quiet. In fact I go to great lengths to not draw attention to myself.
I flew on an Air Canada over-the-pole flight a few years ago. We left Toronto, headed NW-ish, and then got on line of longitude 84°W and headed exactly due north (straight-up 84°W). Eventually the plane veered off to the left. We got within 378 miles of the North Pole.
No where near Vancouver.
YMM obviously V.
Getting drunk while on a business trip is completely out of line. Drink exposes who you really are, and they exposed themselves, in the psychological sense, as utter jackasses.
Nevertheless, as a Canadian, I have a sneaking admiration of guys who are so ravaged that they would and could chew through two different kinds of restraint. The wild, wild Canadian north still breeds berserkers.
Having said that, let's see if they are tough enough to handle that long-term unemployment they are facing.
CBS isn't news, they are Establishment propaganda.
CBS has an unlimited amount of stories like this, but they won't talk seriously about
monetary system collapse
US Constitution
Eric Holder
Banksters
CAFR
DHS
The goal here is to keep you busy hating little people, begging for more problem, reaction, solution, instead of going after the biggest criminals and banksters.
What the hell do drunk executives from a Phone Manufactuer and the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) have to do with CBS or Banking?
There are plenty of places to mindlessly rant about the bankers and other business criminals, but last I checked El Reg wasn't really one of them. Pick an "Occupy" Movement on Facebook or the wider Web and rant there.
It sounds like the air crew made the classic mistake of tying the wrists. Tie the ELBOWS (and knees, if you are working on the lower extremities) - ideally, to the arms of the seat, so they cannot lean over and start chewing.
One of the many things learned from The Girl, the Gold Watch, and Everything.
Better still, tie their wrist, but with their arms behind them. Police do it all the time to crims... Makes it uncomfortable for them to sit for very long, but why should the crew care after the louts tried to destroy parts of the aircraft...
Or you could tie their wrists in front, but then tie their wrists to their knees or ankles... to keep them from reaching the tie straps...
Must be wine o'clock somewhere... El Reg, where's a WINE icon?