Originally Posted by
Lookleft
There has been a lot of focus on the deterioration of basic flying skills but what this highlights, an incident that occurred 4 years ago, is a deterioration in the basic understanding of the fundamentals of what keeps an aircraft flying! Are there too many pilots who have accepted the mantra that flying is always safe and nothing can go wrong? Is there a lack of understanding that as pilots we are the last line of defense? Are there too many pilots that are merely passengers in a uniform? I don't know what the solution is but reversing the denigration of the job category of pilot by airlines would be a good start.
Lookleft I agree that there's a problem but not sure it's a deterioration of the basics. The captain had over 14000 hours total time and the first office was over 6500 hours total time. Never worked in the airline world but in the military the pilot or first office did the walk around and removed all the tie downs and covers not the flight engineer or a ground agent. As to why they didn't see the flags or understand why they were not getting any airspeed indication is a question that they need to answer