Captain guards the yoke...

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typhoonpilot said:
No doubt U.S. carriers rank high in safety statistics. It is not just statistics that we are looking at though. Marginally competent pilots can safely fly from A to B most of the time. Knock wood, but EK has a zero fatality rate in 25 years of operation. That's pretty safe, wouldn't you agree.
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I do agree. They are now a huge global airline that has, for many years, operated over hostile areas and into very temperamental countries where airports exchange hands between militants. Wasn't more than a few weeks ago one of their planes was caught in a Pakistani rocket fight. Also they have a very international crew base which has to make CRM that much more difficult. Kudos to them for mitigating the risks and keeping all these millions of pax safe. However, like @ATN_Pilot said, they experienced rapid growth in the late 90s. This means that when most developed countries were still having the occasional air disaster and working out the kinks to bring us to the comparatively ultra safe industry that has since been created through the blood of so many, Emirates did indeed have a faction of the network many other carriers had who did have accidents. With the modern fleet they have today and all the lessons of the past, I don't doubt Emirates can hopefully maintain that safety record. But to compare them to an airline like United who was losing mail planes back in the frontier days of flight, it's just a whole different standard. I think we can agree that today few if any who feel safe on Emirates would have second thoughts boarding a legacy US carrier.

This isn't intended as a knock about Emirates, but I do have to bring up the Melbourne A340 accident. I think we can agree that in the end, the pilots were very, very fortunate they did not have a full disaster on their hands with ground fatalities as well as all or most of the people behind them. I know this was a mistake that wasn't all that hard to make in the grand scheme of things, but it still happened.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emirates_Flight_407

 
ChasenSFO said:
I do agree. They are now a huge global airline that has, for many years, operated over hostile areas and into very temperamental countries where airports exchange hands between militants. Wasn't more than a few weeks ago one of their planes was caught in a Pakistani rocket fight. Also they have a very international crew base which has to make CRM that much more difficult. Kudos to them for mitigating the risks and keeping all these millions of pax safe. However, like @ATN_Pilot said, they experienced rapid growth in the late 90s. This means that when most developed countries were still having the occasional air disaster and working out the kinks to bring us to the comparatively ultra safe industry that has since been created through the blood of so many, Emirates did indeed have a faction of the network many other carriers had who did have accidents. With the modern fleet they have today and all the lessons of the past, I don't doubt Emirates can hopefully maintain that safety record. But to compare them to an airline like United who was losing mail planes back in the frontier days of flight, it's just a whole different standard. I think we can agree that today few if any who feel safe on Emirates would have second thoughts boarding a legacy US carrier.

This isn't intended as a knock about Emirates, but I do have to bring up the Melbourne A340 accident. I think we can agree that in the end, the pilots were very, very fortunate they did not have a full disaster on their hands with ground fatalities as well as all or most of the people behind them. I know this was a mistake that wasn't all that hard to make in the grand scheme of things, but it still happened.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emirates_Flight_407

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Funny thing about this is that, according to Wikipedia, the pilots were both asked to resign after arrival back in Dubai. I've worked for more than one airline where tail strikes have occurred on takeoff; at no point were the pilots terminated or asked to resign. They all kept their jobs after going through retraining, and procedures have been changed to prevent it from happening again. There's simply no reason to fire pilots over stuff like this if the only outcome is a bit of scraped metal or tailskid, especially when fatigue and other factors are present.

Side note: I've personally flown with several of the pilots involved in those tail strikes, and I can attest that they are not mediocre pilots. There were a number of "swiss cheese" factors involved that led to the tail strikes, any of which could have led any of us down the same path.
 
Well, in the Emirates incident, the whole thing seems to have been predicated on putting the wrong numbers in the box. Ergo, wrong flex power settings, ergo not 'nuff thrust. Sounds sort of like the Air Florida mess in DC. Except without the icing, and thirty years later. Draw your own conclusions.
 
Boris Badenov said:
Well, in the Emirates incident, the whole thing seems to have been predicated on putting the wrong numbers in the box. Ergo, wrong flex power settings, ergo not 'nuff thrust. Sounds sort of like the Air Florida mess in DC. Except without the icing, and thirty years later. Draw your own conclusions.
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That was the main factor in the tail strike incidents I'm referring to as well. Get in a hurry, the box spits out bad numbers, and off you go. It can happen to the best of us. I'd like to think if I was there, I'd say "Gee, those numbers look a bit low for our weight," but with all the distractions involved in getting the jet going, along with fatigue? Who the hell knows.
 
Boris Badenov said:
I'm not interested in discrediting you, TP. I would, however, like to know what metric you're using to determine that the various training failures to which you allude are indicative of US pilots not meeting the "higher standards" of your company, vs. not meeting the standards of your company. To wit, how did you determine that those standards were higher? That seems like a fair question, do you not think?
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I get what he's saying. Like the Europeans who require you to be able to build a turbine engine to get an ATP, it could be called a "higher standard." It could be that the higher standard has zero impact on safety, but that's still a higher standard for training.

I get what you are saying too, but you guys are talking past each other.
 
No argument from me on the handling of the Melbourne incident and what happened to the crew. Many argued on their behalf, including me. It is one off the 2 incidents I referenced in an earlier post. It was a 100 tonne error in the OPT. Easy to make considering the Airbus pilots normally fly the A330 or A340-300 which are considerably lighter aircraft. To put 262.9 tonnes into the OPT is not an unreasonable number that would cause one to pause.

TP
 
dasleben said:
Funny thing about this is that, according to Wikipedia, the pilots were both asked to resign after arrival back in Dubai. I've worked for more than one airline where tail strikes have occurred on takeoff; at no point were the pilots terminated or asked to resign. They all kept their jobs after going through retraining, and procedures have been changed to prevent it from happening again. There's simply no reason to fire pilots over stuff like this if the only outcome is a bit of scraped metal or tailskid, especially when fatigue and other factors are present.

Side note: I've personally flown with several of the pilots involved in those tail strikes, and I can attest that they are not mediocre pilots. There were a number of "swiss cheese" factors involved that led to the tail strikes, any of which could have led any of us down the same path.
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I see what you're talking about, but..this incident was more than a tail-strike. It was pretty much "better strike the tail and nurse this thing into ground effect or we're going to hit those buildings and roll across the departure path as a fireball". They were dismissed, I remember that being on BBC right after the incident, but I'm almost certain Emirates looked at this much more harshly than any other tail-strike in their history. Without checking the wiki, I think they took out some approach lights and the roof of an airport building.

Edit: it was lights and an antenna they hit. They cleared the building by an estimated 20 inches. Woah. Still sucks they didn't get a fighting chance when here in the states a Canyon Blue 737 almost plows off a short runway at the wrong airport and they at least get a full investigation without instant termination. I do believe no matter how bad the mistake, a factual report is vital to the outcome, otherwise everyone else will have their tail between their legs.
 
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Boris Badenov said:
I'm not interested in discrediting you, TP. I would, however, like to know what metric you're using to determine that the various training failures to which you allude are indicative of US pilots not meeting the "higher standards" of your company, vs. not meeting the standards of your company. To wit, how did you determine that those standards were higher? That seems like a fair question, do you not think?
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Again, I said 70-80 percentage do okay. So we are referencing 20-30% who have problems, not all Americans. Can we agree that is what I initially said?

I listed examples from memory. Those are a short list of the ones that I know about. There were many many more. I would say that ability to fly was only a factor in 10% of the pilots. The other 10-20% was attitude. An attitude of superiority because they came from America where, "the safety record speaks for itself and nobody is better than us."

The higher standard metric was predominantly knowledge. Not knowledge of how to build a turbine engine or knowledge to know what the drift rate of an uncaged gyro travelling westbound in the northern hemisphere is. What was/is often lacking was practical operational knowledge and situational awareness.


TP
 
Boris Badenov said:
Well, that certainly seems to be true. Heh.

I'll say for the last time, and then shut up, though, that if safety is the goal, our "lower" standards don't seem to be lower at all. *shrug*.
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Yes, but what margin does one operate from to the bottom of that safety line? That's what I am talking about by standards.


TP
 
OK. I don't dispute this, because I have no experience flying with Unamerican Pilots (except for @DPApilot, but that's because he's a communist). But why do you imagine that these various shortcomings fail to manifest themselves in the accident record? Genuinely curious. I mean, I have my own suspicions, but the fact that my suspicions most likely don't agree with yours doesn't mean we can't have a productive conversation on the topic.
 
typhoonpilot said:
Yes, but what margin does one operate from to the bottom of that safety line? That's what I am talking about by standards.


TP
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Again, it seems unimportant to me, in a statistical sense, how far from some arbitrary, subjective line one operates. If X/100 airplanes arrive intact and undamaged, the system is working. No? It seems to me that everything else is just personal preference, subjective interpretation, etc*. The curse of humankind.

* Also known to the vulgar as "cock-sizing". And please be apprised that this is not exclusively the domain of "furriner-flyin" pilots. God knows we see plenty of it here.
 
There's a hole in this argument, by the way... I've only heard that 20-30% of Americans can't hack it. What's the percentage of non-Americans who don't pass? The 20-30% figure is a broad enough range to be completely anecdotal and not really based on real statistics, anyway.
 
Lemme turn it around. I've flown with some pilots who were trained outside of the US. I could tell you, and feel pretty good about doing it, that in the main they were procedure-oriented to the point of narcolepsy if anything outside of their comfort-zone occurred. Like, death-grip-on-yoke, deer-in-headlights frozen. I could then, if I were so inclined, extrapolate that flying on third-world airlines is a terrifying prospect that no one should ever undertake under any circumstances, because, you know, everything they ever learned, they learned in the sim, and they fly an airplane the same way the rest of us assemble an Ikea dresser. To wit, by the book, and really badly.

But that would be ridiculous, because the statistics bear out that lots of "third world" airlines are very, very safe. "Different" is just different. Not necessarily better or worse. Now let's all hug and sing Kumbayah.
 
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Boris Badenov said:
OK. I don't dispute this, because I have no experience flying with Unamerican Pilots (except for @DPApilot, but that's because he's a communist). But why do you imagine that these various shortcomings fail to manifest themselves in the accident record? Genuinely curious. I mean, I have my own suspicions, but the fact that my suspicions most likely don't agree with yours doesn't mean we can't have a productive conversation on the topic.
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¿Que?
 
Boris Badenov said:
OK. I don't dispute this, because I have no experience flying with Unamerican Pilots (except for @DPApilot, but that's because he's a communist). But why do you imagine that these various shortcomings fail to manifest themselves in the accident record? Genuinely curious. I mean, I have my own suspicions, but the fact that my suspicions most likely don't agree with yours doesn't mean we can't have a productive conversation on the topic.
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I would say that because the majority of US airline flying is from one radar vectored ILS to another. Also the US airline pilot has a significant support network operationally that helps keep him/her out of trouble by accomplishing many tasks on his/her behalf.

One of my arguments in the Melbourne incident, since it was brought up, was that EK should move to central load planning. Having pilots intricately involved in the weight and balance computation just adds another level of risk that does not need to be there.


TP
 
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