Tragedy in the Skies--Crash of Flight 1771 Kills 43 People

Being shocked as everyone might be regarding the recent airline disaster caused by an enraged airline employee, I was almost as shocked to read the consensus was to tighten airline security. Not one word was mentioned about how management of the airline showed rather gross incompetence in dealing with an employee with 18 years on the job who was found to be guilty of stealing $69 worth of quarters from a vending machine.

I thought we were past the time where lack of compassion and understanding were deemed necessary to make a profit. Indeed I thought that the hearts and minds of MBAs were programmed to set an example of counseling verbally and in writing prior to termination.

The loss of experience of Burke would make what he stole rather absurd by comparison, not to mention the loss of 42 other souls, lawsuits, a jet aircraft, the incalculable cost of parents lost to children, and mass pain and misery to other survivors.

Desperate would probably be a rather tame word for Burke’s mental state.

Surely not everyone involved would have been so stupid as to give thumbs down to Burke in the name of cost-effectiveness or setting an example for other employees.

Management officials of the airline must figure largely as bearing responsibility for the bizarre chain of events because of their medieval posture on employee-manager relations which provoked an already crazed individual to commit the largest mass murder in United States history.

The airlines should take a long, hard look at themselves and their management style and then check out the security system, which will never be adequate to keep out a determined psychopath or terrorist to which very recent history can attest.

HARVEY A. MONAHAN

Santa Ana