The Bashing Begins

[Caveman]

When the FedEx plane crashed in Japan recently, I don't recall anyone bashing those dead guys for poor airmanship. They dicked up a simple crosswind landing. Everybody else seemed to be able to land safely that day. Why couldn't they? Did you watch the video? They were porpoising down the runway like a student in a 172. How could experienced major airline pilots make such a gross mistake? It was CAVU clear and a million for chrissakes! If they had had more experience it never would have happened. That's what you get when you hire pilots with their backgrounds. I'd never make that kind of mistake. Plus, when you only pay peanuts all you get is incompetent idiots. (Sarcasm alert)

Major airline or regional. Military or civilian. Well seasoned or inexperienced. Well paid or on food stamps. Anybody can make a fatal mistake or error in judgement. Sometimes there are external factors like severe icing or severe gusty crosswinds that make your mistake or error unrecoverable and then people die. We've all made them, but most of us got away with it.....that time. What pisses me off are you holier than thou types that think it will never happen to you. Grow the ******************** up or shut up.

RIP to the Colgan crew and the FedEx crew.

 

[enuffalready]

When the FedEx plane crashed in Japan recently, I don't recall anyone bashing those dead guys for poor airmanship. They dicked up a simple crosswind landing. Everybody else seemed to be able to land safely that day. Why couldn't they? Did you watch the video? They were porpoising down the runway like a student in a 172. How could experienced major airline pilots make such a gross mistake? It was CAVU clear and a million for chrissakes! If they had had more experience it never would have happened. That's what you get when you hire pilots with their backgrounds. I'd never make that kind of mistake. Plus, when you only pay peanuts all you get is incompetent idiots. (Sarcasm alert)

Major airline or regional. Military or civilian. Well seasoned or inexperienced. Well paid or on food stamps. Anybody can make a fatal mistake or error in judgement. Sometimes there are external factors like severe icing or severe gusty crosswinds that make your mistake or error unrecoverable and then people die. We've all made them, but most of us got away with it.....that time. What pisses me off are you holier than thou types that think it will never happen to you. Grow the ******************** up or shut up.

RIP to the Colgan crew and the FedEx crew.

This is an excellent post. Any pilot who sits back and says he never made a mistake is more dangerous that the ones who admit it and learn from it. I had an approach to a very familiar airport about 6 years ago, middle of the night, plane full of passengers and i didn't realize until it was pointed out in a very professional manner that i was lining up on the wrong runway. it was a visual and I was doing everything like i had done 1,000 times before. Even though it was totally uneventful and nobody knew any different, I kept thinking over and over what would have happened if I had been single pilot that night. I learned from that, but could have just as easily been another statistic. By the grace of God go I.

 

[goodgig]

Caveman, the info is not out there for the FedEx.
Let's leave that for another day, eh? I would bet the house that the FedEx flight was carried out in a more professional manner though....

 

[climbhappy]

what I get from you, caveman, is that no matter the pilot time, on any given day, any plane aloft can crash..period... sounds like we need to ground all air operations... too unsafe with that kind of threat.... i get your point, though!

i reject the premise. back to QA inspection and QA procedures at the human level.


new rules

maybe more than 2 busts of any kind and you can't be a 121 pilot? call it the 3 strikes rule
too strict?
maybe min time of 1500 and ATP rating to apply

too strict?

maybe min pay for 121 jobs start at 40,000 and goes up based on # of seats.

 

[Caveman]

Caveman, the info is not out there for the FedEx.
Let's leave that for another day, eh? I would bet the house that the FedEx flight was carried out in a more professional manner though....

I used an over the top exaggeration of the FedEx crash to make a point about Monday morning QBing the Colgan crew. Hence, the sarcasm alert. I was not insinuating anything about the FedEx crew at all.

Why would you assume the FedEx flight was carried out in a more professional manner? I don't see where anything in the Colgan CVR was unprofessional. In fact, they were actively discussing the developing situation that was about to kill them. They didn't interpret the info as being as critical as it was, but they can't be faulted for not recognizing something was going on. They are guilty of not understand the severity of the situation, but that's not unprofessional. It's simply a lack of experience. Which, btw, you can't get unless you experience stuff. Unfortunately for them, their first experience was severe enough to kill them. But for the grace of God go I. The rest of the conversation was normal stuff that happens on every leg. How was it unprofessional?

IMO the Colgan crash, the Comair crash and the FedEx crash were all flown by competent, trained crews acting in a professional manner. They all made mistakes and paid the ultimate price for it. Inexperienced doesn't equal unprofessional and professional doesn't automatically equal immunity from making mistakes. As indicated in a previous post, experienced professional crews have made mistakes that resulted in fatal accidents.

 

[Caveman]

what I get from you, caveman, is that no matter the pilot time, on any given day, any plane aloft can crash..period... sounds like we need to ground all air operations... too unsafe with that kind of threat.... i get your point, though!

i reject the premise. back to QA inspection and QA procedures at the human level.


new rules

maybe more than 2 busts of any kind and you can't be a 121 pilot? call it the 3 strikes rule
too strict?
maybe min time of 1500 and ATP rating to apply

too strict?

maybe min pay for 121 jobs start at 40,000 and goes up based on # of seats.

I'm guessing that a quick study of major accidents over the years will reveal that the overwhelming majority of pilots involved will meet the mins you suggested above. So how does your new mins change anything?

 

[Cardinal]

I'm guessing that a quick study of major accidents over the years will reveal that the overwhelming majority of pilots involved will meet the mins you suggested above. So how does your new mins change anything?

The overwhelming majority of accidents in the last 7 years involve lowtime regional pilots with sketchy backgrounds, so it seems like a start.

 

[PeanuckleCRJ]

Caveman is correct... the FLG3701 guys each had plenty of time in type, and the comair 191 guys had a very large amount of experience in the crj.

The legacy accidents over the years have been largely resultant of culture problems. The problem now is the regionals are having to relearn how to correct the exact same culture problems through killing people- again.

 

[777forever]

The overwhelming majority of accidents in the last 7 years involve lowtime regional pilots with sketchy backgrounds, so it seems like a start.

Negative ghostrider, pattern is full. Come back with credible sources to back this statement up(you won't) and we can have an educated debate.

 

[realmanofgenius]

i hear in five years there will be an airline pilot shortage from a wave of retirements...maybe then they'll go back to trying to get guys with 300/50 as colgan was at the Air Inc. job fair in DC , Oct/07
in fact , most regionals were around 300 to 500/50 at that point in time.

that's when you do it..during the next uptic.