Mach 2.0 Mouth

Guaranteed the following won’t happen in Malaysia.

An Air New Zealand pilot who was pissed off waiting for the Kiwi PM criticised the PM over the aeroplane’s public address (PA) system for causing the delay because she was “arranging alternative transport”. He sarcastically added that the PM did not support the national carrier.

Poor PM Helen Clark had been wrongly accused by Captain Supersonic Mouth - she didn't look for alternative transport nor was she responsible for the aeroplane's delayed departure. In fact four other blokes boarded the aeroplane way after her. When the pilot found out his mouth had operated faster than the Anglo-French Concorde he invited the PM to the cockpit to apologise to her.

He then broadcast over the PA an apology to the passengers for causing offence.

The PM wasn’t too impressed at being wrongly accused. She said:
"It was a distressing* incident because the pilot made comments that were factually wrong."

* btw, she pronounced 'distressing' as 'distrissing' ;-)

Can you ever imagine all these happening in a Malaysian environment, where a MAS pilot ticked the Malaysian PM off publicly over the plane's PA system, and the latter merely reacted with something bland like "It was a distressing incident"?

An Air New Zealand spokesperson said: "We have taken the opportunity to take him [the pilot] off flying duties for the next couple of days and we are going to give him some communication style (training)."

This probably means that he’ll be having a couple of beers with his communication trainer and leering at sheeps. ;-)

If you recall, last year the police had charged the NZ PM’s motorcade and her police escort for speeding through towns, purely on the basis of the time taken for the journey that would have been impossible unless they were speeding.

I salute the Kiwis for their democracy and the exercise of rule of law. I salute Prime Minister Helen Clark for remembering she's the New Zealanders' elected representative rather than some imagined highborn aristocrat who takes no-shit from bloody peasants.

However, I think the pilot ought to have been punished with a kiss from Helen Clark for not getting his facts right. Now, that for him, would have been a severe sentence wakakaka