flying danger
"I never fly with budget airlines" said a colleague of mine. "because if there's maintenance needed on the plane and they are pushed for time, they check the passenger list to see if anyone important is on board, and if there isn't, they just let the plane go and take the risk..."

Despite my arguments against this ludicrous suggestion (the engineers don't have access to passenger lists, and maintenance is very heavily regulated in the UK), he continued to insist that he had a mate who worked for a budget airline and had told him this, not only that he'd seen a documentary about it as well...

Unfortunately he repeated his story in front of another colleague of mine, who is a total aeroplane nut (or "enthusiast"), who is very knowledgable in airline procedures, and whose father worked on maintenance for BA for many years.

But even when faced with obvious contradictory facts, the guy wouldn't budge. A bullshitter should at least have the balls to back down once proved wrong...
( calibrax loves teh hamsters (not in that way), Wed 5 Dec 2007, 14:26, 3 replies)

OTOH
If you replaced the word "maintenance" with "cleaning" on the other hand, he would have probably been correct.
(lardaholics anonymous, Wed 5 Dec 2007, 15:03, closed)

.
Not backing down is usually a strong part of the personality that drives people to become bullshitters in the first place... saving face and building it out of nothing aren't that different.
(misanthrope is so adjective he's verbing nouns!, Wed 5 Dec 2007, 15:26, closed)

misanthrope... spot on!!
just look at George Bush..
( Humpty Dumpty was Pushed Is unaware of having any limits., Wed 5 Dec 2007, 17:22, closed)