You never change the pilot halfway through a flight, says a clearly rattled David Lammy. Can’t he see that his party is in a tailspin?
A
couple of days ago on a Swiss flight from Seoul to Zurich, a pilot experienced a medical emergency. Three doctors on board assisted, one of the other pilots assumed the controls, and the plane ended up landing without harm to life. Like me, you will be absolutely appalled that David Lammy wasn’t also on the passenger manifest, hammering furiously on the cockpit door and offering that timeworn advice: “You don’t change the pilot during a flight!”
I mean … don’t you? Ever? I’m quite a nervous flyer and can definitely envisage a fairly significant number of situations in which you would, in fact, very much change the pilot mid-flight.
Still, sometimes it feels like there are only about five metaphors in contemporary British politics, and the folly of a pilot switcheroo is definitely one of them. Today’s a big day for it, let’s face it. Huge! Of course, the aviation sticklers will be on hand to point out that actually, if you count the switch to auto-pilot, you almost always change the pilot mid-flight. Furthermore, most long-haul flights can give at least three pilots a chance to shine/not lose every single contested seat in Hartlepool to Reform.
