You heard right, going with the whole non-pilot people in the flight deck thing… we have this.
A Chinese pilot has been grounded, and his flight cert has been suspended after a picture of a woman getting to sit in the flight deck, while in mid-flight, went viral on social media. This sparked outrage over a breach of safety rules in China’s government.
“The photo was spotted by a Chinese aviation blogger on Sunday. The blogger identified that the image was taken on an Air Guilin plane mid-flight, and criticized the airline for disregarding flight safety. The woman has since deleted the original photo on her Weibo account.” -CNN
Monday, the airline said it had suspended the unnamed pilot from flying duties “for life” for violating civil aviation rules, while other members of the flight crew had been banned indefinitely, pending further investigation. -CNN
The pilot has been fired from the airline and may have his cert permanently removed. The government has also considered putting him on a flying blacklist, preventing him from flying anywhere whether as a pilot or a passenger. However, this has not been 100% confirmed.
As for the woman, she deleted her social media pages and has also been considered to be blacklisted from flying.
“The woman was identified as a student taking a flight attendant course at the Guilin Tourism University, according to the state-run People’s Daily. It is unclear whether she is personally connected to the pilot.”
All this over a picture…
