No one, least of all professional pilots as a body, would wish to condone evasion of the issue where a pilot has wilfully or recklessly hazarded his machine and the lives of those on board. Equally there is common ground throughout the industry that air safety demands the rigorous selection of pilots for ability, together with extensive training to create and maintain necessary pilot skills.

Bearing in mind the initial licensing requirements that the State lays down and the regular re-examination that a pilot submits to in competency checks there is, on the face of it, every opportunity for rejecting basically unsuitable applicants and for correcting later shortcomings in the performance of an established pilot.

This seems to imply that we have to look further for the possible origins of whatever comes to be called ‘poor airmanship'.