Originally Posted by
A320LGW
Unfortunately what they will never 'report' is that this was a diversity hire, not one on merit.
Will all operators commit to hiring solely based on merit or do we need another incident of this type and more pain with the potential loss of hundreds of lives?
Hiring on merit is considered unfair to groups who do poorly on tests of technical aptitude. You are correct, the word 'diversity' will not be mentioned in the final NTSB report.
As with some other U.S. freighter mishaps, the pilot flying in the Atlas Air 3591 crash had an abysmal training history.
Aska, who was 44, joined Atlas Air in 2017 from the regional airline Mesa, where he had failed to win promotion to captain an Embraer 175 regional jet after being given an unsatisfactory rating in two flight simulator sessions.
Two Mesa captains who evaluated Aska told NTSB that he would get flustered when he encountered unexpected situations in training. Capt. Leigh Lawless said he would “make frantic mistakes,” and would “start pushing a lot of buttons without thinking about what he was pushing.”
Aska failed to finish training at two other U.S. airlines. He left Air Wisconsin after four months of training to be a first officer of a Bombardier CRJ regional jet. The NTSB says he cited personal reasons.
In 2011, he resigned after a month at CommutAir due to “lack of progress in training” to become first officer of a De Havilland Canada Dash 8 regional turboprop, the report says.
Aska failed to list his stints at Air Wisconsin and CommutAir on his employment application, and according to Atlas Air’s director of training, the airline was not aware of it. With that information “we would not have offered him a position,” the NTSB quotes the executive as saying.
After the 2009 Colgan Air crash, Congress required the Federal Aviation Administration to set up a clearinghouse including FAA and employer records on pilots to aid carriers in vetting them, but it has yet to complete the process.
After joining Atlas Air in July 2017, Aska’s training to pilot a 767 did not go smoothly. He was required to undergo 4.5 hours of remedial instruction before he could take an oral exam, and then he was held back for four additional hours of remedial training on a fixed-base simulator before he was allowed to proceed to training on a full-flight simulator, which has motion systems to better replicate the feel of flying.
After two sessions, a fellow student he was paired with complained that Aska was holding him back, and his instructors decided to restart his full flight simulator training from the beginning.
He failed his practical 767 type rating examination, the NTSB says, “due to unsatisfactory performance in crew resource management, threat and error management, non-precision approaches, steep turns and judgment.”
After remedial training he passed, but an NTSB operational factors report questions why Atlas Air didn’t put him in an FAA-mandated, six-month proficiency watch program for remedial training and tracking. Atlas Air’s fleet captain for the 747 and 767 told NTSB investigators that he chalked up the pilot’s poor performance to nervousness, and considering the gaps in his training and family issues he was experiencing, decided to just keep an eye on his performance.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeremyb.../#248dec779cc5