Sri Lankan Airlines – How Safe Are You To Fly?

By Marlon Dale Ferreira -February 9, 2015

Marlon Dale Ferreira

The Deputy General and Chief Executive Officer of the Civil Aviation Authority of Sri Lanka H.M.C Nimalsiri in a stern email addressed to the Sri Lankan Airlines Chief Executive Officer Kapila Chandrasena earlier, had intimated his displeasure regarding the supposedly committed gross violation of the Air Navigation Regulations and the associated violations of International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) standards by certain pilots of the airline, thereby threatening the safety of the airline’s operating of commercial flights that carry passengers on board.

Nimalsiri’s email refers to Pilots practicing abnormal and emergency situations on commercial flights when these procedures should never be done with lives at stake.

These maneuvers must only be practiced under the watchful eyes of an Instructor and only in a Flight Simulator, he reiterated.

His opening paragraph stating this startling revelation and threatening the safety of our national carrier Sri Lankan Airlines has raised many eye brows, but more importantly raised the question by future travelers as to “how safe is it to fly with Sri Lankan Airlines anymore?”.

His full email sent in January 2015 reads as follows:Read More

Smart Patriotism, Loyalty To Rulers And Ignorance: A Response To Dayan

By Mahendra De Silva -February 9, 2015

The feeling of patriotism – It is an immoral feeling because, instead of confessing himself a son of God . . . or even a free man guided by his own reason, each man under the influence of patriotism confesses himself the son of his fatherland and the slave of his government, and commits actions contrary to his reason and conscience. –  Leo Tolstoy, Patriotism and Government

In a recent article in Colombo Telegraph Dr. Dayan Jayatillake has given some interesting descriptions of the dumb patriotism and smart patriotism. He has indirectly hinted that anyone who does not fit the above categories would be an unpatriotic. It appears that the purpose of Dayan’s article is to justify his actions in the last few years in politics of Sri Lanka. In this article I wish to contest some of his views on patriotism.

To start, I took following passage from his article;

There is dumb patriotism and there is smart patriotism. When the dumb patriot says “my country right or wrong”, he/she means that whether it does right or wrong in the moral sense, he/she will defend it. When the smart patriot says it, he/she means that whether it is in the right or in the wrong, it is his/her country; the only country she really has or belongs to. It is where he is coming from. It is the place he identifies with. It is where he is rooted. It is home. He will not defend everything its government or state does; but defend the country, he will. In that sense the smart patriot loves his/her country unconditionally though it may be a ‘tough love The dumb patriot thinks his country is the best in the world and even the greatest. The smart patriot does not and his love of country is not based on blind faith or an intrinsic, unwarranted sense of superiority. The smart patriot is constructively critical about his country but is fiercely loyal to it all the same. He will criticize it but will unconditionally defend his country from the hypocritical criticism of foreign powers and institutions responsible for or blind to far worse crimes.

My main disagreement with Dayan’s views on patriotism is that he failed to distinguish the difference between love for the country and love for the rulers of the country. Read More