Safety Culture at Middle Eastern Carriers

Seggy

Seggy

Well-Known Member
typhoonpilot said:
Ignorant comment Seggy. I can't speak for Qatar from personal experience, but I know they train to a high standard with all the modern tools for safety and CRM incorporated. Union or non-union has nothing to do with it.
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It isn't ignorance at all. You are so blinded by your own personal interests in these airlines you can't coherently discuss the facts about the safety cultures surrounding these airlines as well as the societies they operate in.

http://www.expressen.se/nyheter/the-truth-about-the-luxury-of-qatar-airways/


Procedurally if they had no indications of a tail strike and pressurization was normal there would be no requirement to return to the departure airport. If, OTOH, they received a TAIL STRIKE caution the checklist requires landing at the nearest suitable airport. There have been B777-300 tail skid contacts in the past where the tower reported it to the aircraft. Again, even with that, unless the TAIL STRIKE EICAS comes up, the written procedure from Boeing is to continue as normal.



Typhoonpilot
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Well, sometimes you have to think outside of procedures and be an aviator. Such as if you suspect damage from ripping off some lights at the end of the runway. There may not be an EICAS for that depending on where you hit them.
 
Seggy said:
It isn't ignorance at all. You are so blinded by your own personal interests in these airlines you can't coherently discuss the facts about the safety cultures surrounding these airlines as well as the societies they operate in.

http://www.expressen.se/nyheter/the-truth-about-the-luxury-of-qatar-airways/




Well, sometimes you have to think outside of procedures and be an aviator. Such as if you suspect damage from ripping off some lights at the end of the runway. There may not be an EICAS for that depending on where you hit them.
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When one of them stalls and crashes outside BUF or over the ocean, let me know. And I'll agree with you wholeheartedly. Until then, it's just a die-hard ALPAist taking the opportunity to jab at the ME3 carriers.
 
Seggy said:
It isn't ignorance at all. You are so blinded by your own personal interests in these airlines you can't coherently discuss the facts about the safety cultures surrounding these airlines as well as the societies they operate in.

http://www.expressen.se/nyheter/the-truth-about-the-luxury-of-qatar-airways/
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Good god Seggy, what do Flight Attendants Saga and Gina have to do with the flight deck culture of Qatar Airways?


Seggy said:
Well, sometimes you have to think outside of procedures and be an aviator. Such as if you suspect damage from ripping off some lights at the end of the runway. There may not be an EICAS for that depending on where you hit them.
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So your advice is to ignore Boeing's written advice on the matter of possible tail strikes in the B777?

Before more details about the incident come out it's not fair to crucify either the pilots or the airline. Unless there was a TAIL STRIKE EICAS; the aircraft was unable to pressurize; or the tower told them they left pieces of the airplane on the ground I just don't see a compelling reason for them to land as soon as possible. In the case of the last one, we don't know what was communicated at this point nor do we know what the flight attendants, passengers, or crew felt(if anything).



TP
 
typhoonpilot said:
Good god Seggy, what do Flight Attendants Saga and Gina have to do with the flight deck culture of Qatar Airways?
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What it does is point to a society that breeds a culture of fear, unwillingness to rock the boat for safety concerns, and brushing things under the rug so they don't get noticed and corrected.



So your advice is to ignore Boeing's written advice on the matter of possible tail strikes in the B777?

Before more details about the incident come out it's not fair to crucify either the pilots or the airline. Unless there was a TAIL STRIKE EICAS; the aircraft was unable to pressurize; or the tower told them they left pieces of the airplane on the ground I just don't see a compelling reason for them to land as soon as possible. In the case of the last one, we don't know what was communicated at this point nor do we know what the flight attendants, passengers, or crew felt(if anything).



TP
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You could have damage away from the coverage area from the TAIL STRIKE EICAS. Put another way, this airplane had an accident, then flew for 14 hours.
 
knot4u said:
Well, sometimes you have to think outside of procedures and be an aviator. Such as if you suspect damage from ripping off some lights at the end of the runway. There may not be an EICAS for that depending on where you hit them.

So what your saying is display some airmanship? I have to admit I'm a little confused.
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Is this for me?
 
Seggy said:
You could have damage away from the coverage area from the TAIL STRIKE EICAS. Put another way, this airplane had an accident, then flew for 14 hours.
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You're making an assumption that they knew the extent of damage and then continued. I would refuse to make that assumption. I say wait until facts come out before you throw the crew under the bus.



TP
 
typhoonpilot said:
You're making an assumption that they knew the extent of damage and then continued. I would refuse to make that assumption. I say wait until facts come out before you throw the crew under the bus.



TP
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Sure!

But......they also took an intersection departure....8500 feet of runway on a 777-300....how are those performance numbers going to work out?
 
Cherokee_Cruiser said:
ALPA was already on property when the accident happened. And even without ALPA, Colgan would have been forced to improve after the accident or else have their operating certificate revoked.
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Come on, son, I know you aren't this stupid, because stone cold morons don't graduate with engineering degrees.

ALPA was on the property for a few weeks. Literally. They didn't even have an accident investigation committee put together yet, so the call went out to MECs throughout ALPA for experienced volunteers to fly in and help Seggy, who was practically on his own with just a few other dedicated volunteers just trying to get the union up and running, let alone deal with a piss poor safety culture and investigate an accident.

It takes a long, long time to correct a bad safety culture. It's not something that is done in months, let alone weeks.

typhoonpilot said:
Union or non-union has nothing to do with it.
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Union or non-union always has something to do with it when safety culture is involved.
 
typhoonpilot said:
Korean airlines has a pilot's union. A very strong one at that. Does that make them safer?

How many fatal accidents have non-union Emirates, Qatar, and Etihad had?

While I'll agree there can be some correlation, I just can't see it being a total correlation.



TP
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I'm not trying to start a fight so don't take my question that way.

I have heard from several pilots that the Emirates guys were forced to resign after their incident. Was it negligence on their part or was it an honest mistake? I've done enough representing of pilots to know that sometimes things happen and having a union is a good thing when the cards are stacked against you.
 
typhoonpilot said:
Korean airlines has a pilot's union. A very strong one at that. Does that make them safer?
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Safer than Delta? No. Safer than they would be without a union? Damn straight. And you know it.

How many fatal accidents have non-union Emirates, Qatar, and Etihad had?
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A useless number, seeing as how all three carriers were tiny carriers not too many years ago, and even today are carriers that operate with few cycles compared to domestic carriers. You'll need several more decades to get any meaningful numbers. And of course, we all know that fatal accidents are only part of the picture.
 
amorris311 said:
I'm not trying to start a fight so don't take my question that way.

I have heard from several pilots that the Emirates guys were forced to resign after their incident. Was it negligence on their part or was it an honest mistake? I've done enough representing of pilots to know that sometimes things happen and having a union is a good thing when the cards are stacked against you.
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If you are speaking of the Melbourne incident there were 4 pilots in the flight deck, two were forced to resign. They were the operating crew in the seats.

There was some lack of procedural accuracy on their part.

I did not agree with the decision.

No question that having unions to protect pilots when they make mistakes is good for the pilots, but a 100% correlation between safety and unionism like Seggy is inferring is not correct.

In fact, I might argue that having too strong of a union can keep incompetent pilots employed when they are a risk to the airline. It can also result in seniority based upgrades of pilots who are not ready or capable of the position.


TP
 
ATN_Pilot said:
Safer than Delta? No. Safer than they would be without a union? Damn straight. And you know it.
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I don't know it, and neither do you. They always had a union and always been one of the worst airlines in safety rankings. The only thing that keeps them safe lately are the non-union expat pilots.



TP
 
typhoonpilot said:
If you are speaking of the Melbourne incident there were 4 pilots in the flight deck, two were forced to resign. They were the operating crew in the seats.

There was some lack of procedural accuracy on their part.

I did not agree with the decision.

TP
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Let us talk about that some more. The pilot of that flight, slept what, about 3 or 4 hours 24 hours prior to the accident? This of course, after flying 99 hours the previous month. Have the scheduling practices at Emirates changed since then? Wouldn't pilots be prone to procedural errors being so fatigued? Looks like there may have been more!

http://www.news.com.au/travel/trave...-highly-probable/story-e6frfq80-1225707342621


Wouldn't a company with a just safety culture have kept them on and look at the system that caused the mistakes? Wait a second, Emirates DID change some procedures after the incident in Melbourne, didn't they? So why didn't they keep the pilots on then?
 
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typhoonpilot said:
If you are speaking of the Melbourne incident there were 4 pilots in the flight deck, two were forced to resign. They were the operating crew in the seats.

There was some lack of procedural accuracy on their part.

I did not agree with the decision.

No question that having unions to protect pilots when they make mistakes is good for the pilots, but a 100% correlation between safety and unionism like Seggy is inferring is not correct.

In fact, I might argue that having too strong of a union can keep incompetent pilots employed when they are a risk to the airline. It can also result in seniority based upgrades of pilots who are not ready or capable of the position.


TP
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Thanks for answering.

We can get in a union argument another time.
 
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