Airplane tears off winglet on jet bridge

In article ,
Mxsmanic wrote:

Grand Mal writes:

I think we can safely assume you're an idiot.
And a vile bigot. Who else would turn a minor accident at an airport into a
racial slur?

Turks belong to the same race as Europeans, so race has nothing to do with it.

The fact is, the aviation safety record for Turkey is abysmal, about ten times
worse than average for European airlines (if you consider Turkey part of
Europe--which I do not).

I've read the several recent posts critical of Turkey's politics and its
aviation safety record, and think there's some significant point to most
of them (except the racial slur one, which _was_ a racial slur).

But let me also tell you: The prestigious US university EE Dept from
which I'm retired gets a fair number of its PhD grad students from
Turkey; I've known a fair number of them well (though never actually had
one as a PhD student of mine); they're superb students technically (they
have to be, to get into this program), and they are also superb
individuals on a purely personal basis.

I just visited the ETH in Zurich (the top technical university in
Switzerland and among the top such schools in Europe), where I spent
time with one of these graduates of ours, who was recruited there (away
from a post at a good US university); has built a large and excellent
program there; and has since received tenure at a very early age.

We'd better find a way to help Turkey itself also move up into the
Western world, and not sink back down into the Middle Eastern.

AES writes:

But let me also tell you: The prestigious US university EE Dept from
which I'm retired gets a fair number of its PhD grad students from
Turkey; I've known a fair number of them well (though never actually had
one as a PhD student of mine); they're superb students technically (they
have to be, to get into this program), and they are also superb
individuals on a purely personal basis.

Pilots do not generally have doctorates. Different population, different
culture.

We'd better find a way to help Turkey itself also move up into the
Western world, and not sink back down into the Middle Eastern.

Turkey needs to solve its own problems, like every other country. If they are
indeed fundamentally competent, then they don't need help. Their culture is
apparently more linked to the Middle East than Europe, which is bad for
development and advancement into the 20th (and eventually the 21st) century.