Originally Posted by
Flyingmole
With respect, a key issue in aviation incidents is human factors, and where such rituals can affect human factors they are relevant to identifying possible causation of incidents and accidents. I say that as someone who has worked in the Middle East for 20 plus years, has a huge respect for the customs and religion, but is acutely aware of the detrimental effect on operational effectiveness of prolonged fasting. The crash was, I believe, around 14.40 local and the Al-Fajr prayer call, when fasting begins, is around 03.25 in Lahore at the moment. If - and it is a big 'if' - the pilot had been fasting then given the timings I have just quoted, it is relevant to consider this in an analysis of the crash.
But since you don't know, any harangue on this as
the causal factor - that is the problem we are dealing with in trying to keep this discussion professional - is a case of jumping to conclusions.
With respect to your experience, there is a chance that the forensic based investigation may or may not prove this consideration to be valid.
And we still don't know whether or not they put the gear down before the first approach.
FFS, how about we work with the basics and then climb up the causation tree. (And for all I know, you may be right!)
To put this in perspective: I had a pilot in our multi crew aircraft (a great many years ago) who - a pilot who was not Muslim nor observing Ramadan - get a bit strange on me during a night flight due to him being mildly hypoglycemic.
Negligence on his part for not taking care of an issue (diet)
that he knew about ahead of time.
Different root cause, same result: he was useless to me. (Yes, he got a piece of my mind once we got back to
terra firma)
How may accident investigation boards have you been on?
It's bloody hard work.