ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
The pilot of a high-sophisticated passenger jet says she just wants to be thanked for doing her job – just like her land-dwelling cousins.
Emma Colton freely admits that she’s ‘just a glorified bus driver’ – albeit one that shoulders more responsibility and has a greater price for error – but that hasn’t stopped her desire to be patted on the back for doing the job she’s been paid for.
The rise of thanking bus drivers for simply not crashing or being late is thanks to an internet meme which has taken cultural cesspits around the western world by storm.
One question, however, still lingers in Colton’s mind.
“Why do I, a highly-trained commercial pilot, have to thank my passengers when they get off but a bus driver responsible for 20-odd-tonnes of Chinese steel gets a rousing applause and maybe even a handshake?” she said.
“I can drive a bus just as well as anybody else. I know people like to show their gratitude to pilots in their own way. Some rare species of human even enjoys clapping upon landing. Don’t do that by the way, it’s fucking weird and we pilots find it quiet embarrassing,”
“Even a polite nod. Like what men do to each other when to acknowledge each other’s presence. That’d do me.”
More to come.
