Publicity Materials

I can actually understand how the passengers and maybe companies want to think about the pilots as interchangeable and reliable units, rather than unpredictible human beings. But this picture makes me laugh. It's from the splash page for a company website. While the women, flight attendants or customer service agents, retain their own smiling faces, the depicted pilot has had his face deliberately blurred out. I don't know who it was, or if there's a story here. Maybe there are deep politics involved. Or the guy in the picture just didn't want to be on the website. Anyone know?

Companies I have worked for have used publicity material showing

• a pilot who had left under poor circumstances
• an airplane that had been destroyed in an accident
• an airplane that had never been owned by the company, wasn't even the same type as the company operated, and had another company's logo poorly airbrushed out

Perhaps it is bad luck to be in a company brochure. I can think of two airplanes and a pilot who have ended their careers prematurely after being featured in company advertising.

One of the pictures in the collage shown on the employment section of one company's website made me laugh right away. I had to do a search to assure myself that it wasn't a cropped version of this picture. The latter one has been around a while, and is obviously photoshopped: the wings of the oncoming aircraft are missing, for example.

I guess the similarity is in resemblance between the pilots, and that the Calm Air windshield has been photoshopped, too. Probably to replace a ramp scene with the neutral sky. It would have been a pretty funny inside joke if they had used that picture.

Edited to remove a link that was dead, anyway.