Emirates Melbourne tailstrike pilot tells his story

The captain of the Emirates Airbus A340-500 that suffered the multiple tail-strike at Melbourne has told his story to the Melbourne's Sunday Herald Sun and an interesting tale it is. Nice scoop guys.

You can read the whole thing here. But here's a couple of points of interest. First is that the pilot, who's a 42 year-old European who doesn't want to be identified, says he had slept for 3.5hr in the previous 24. On the other hand he appears to be ambivalent about the effect of that in the wider picture. Clearly the eventual Australian report is going to be an important document in the ongoing fatigue debate.

Second, the pilot is very clear about what happened to him when he arrived back in Dubai. According to the paper: He and his co-pilot were ordered to resign. They were handed pre-prepared letters of resignation when they returned to Emirates headquarters.

So, contrary to what Emirates said in a formal public statement, they were in fact sacked. And furthermore it looks as if it had been decided before they returned to Dubai that they were to be sacked. As I've said before, I don't see any way that that can be justified.