Fake pilot

Victor Steinbok aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM
Wed Mar 10 19:49:54 UTC 2010


A story has been bothering me for a while now. Maybe I'm just barking up
the wrong tree.

http://bit.ly/9TCDyo

There is nothing actually /fake/ about the pilot--he really is a pilot
and he has flown commercially for many years. The trouble seems to be
that his commercial license was once faked (and, of course, never
"unfaked"). In other words, the story is about a fake license, not a
fake pilot. So the use of "fake" in this context can be most charitably
described as "nuanced"--which seems to be contrary to the whole ethos of
"fake". IMO "Fake" is not nuanced--it's black-and-white. So either the
meaning drifted without me noticing, or "fake pilot" is just the wrong
phrase to describe what happened.

Another version of the report also contains the understatement of the
century by the airline PR guy: "He will never fly for Corendon again!"

     VS-)

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