Your rumor. Nice try. She acted completely professionally when pressured by the airline to take the jet. Obviously she made the correct decision seeing the battery was tanked, and there was no APU.
Did you read Hogg's letter regarding this incident? The airplane returned to service after having the batteries replaced. Further, the batteries were tested, found to have no faults and returned to service. Airbus was consulted and confirmed that the airplane was functioning as designed. So, in essence, no maintainence was required to fix the jet, because it was not broken.
Now I don't know about the 330, but assume it is similar to the 320 that I do know a good deal about. What
I would ask would be, did the batteries have the required min voltage to begin with, and was any attempt made at charging the batteries with ground power prior to attempting to start the APU as procedurally called for?
Regardless, as I have said numerous times, I still support Wells in her decision not to go flying. If things were not working to her satifaction, irrespective of the cause, the safest decision is to not go flying until all issues are resolved. So, yes she made the correct professional decision. However, the rumor of her behavior is pretty strong. I have never heard of a pilot being forceably removed for a command decision, but have seen numerous occasions where inappropriate behavior called for the drastic measure that was used in this instance.
Also, my biggest heartburn over the entire deal is not Wells' role, but usapa's. Airing this in the public forum of the full page ad is about the stupidest thing they could have possibly done. Especially if it turns out Wells did not know how to operate her jet.
So, if it turns out usapa backed the wrong horse, how do they retract their malicious ad, that has already done irreparable harm? How does the company protect itself from a run amok idiotic association that has now twice used this tactic?
Firing Ray or Theur isn't enough. The company really needs to petition the NMB, and see if there is something they can do regarding having usapa either lose its representational status, or placed into some kind of trusteeship.