[fill in the nationality] should not fly, as simple as that.
Does that stand for the Canadian A320 trying to land on 4 aircraft on a taxiway as well?
Or the US flight crew that drove a B767 into the water off Houston spoiling the delivery time of Amazon Prime?
How about... AF447?
How about... the Rostov on Don B738?
How about... worlds wonders doing a downwards G/A in an A320 that accelerated all the way down to 50AGL?
How about a B737CL that taxies with a bit of swagger after a 4g landing in scrumpy country?
How about a B777 forgetting to climb on a departure,
How about a B777 retracting the gear on a G/A and settling onto the ground?
American Airlines flight 2341?
American Airlines flight 300?
American Airlines flight 567?
American Airlines flight 1586?
American Airlines flight 331?
etc,
should we start on Delta, United, Lufthansa, Air France, Birdseed?
The MD11F that missed the runway at Ted Stevens 2 times, having got to close to 360 kts at 3000' on the arrival into FAA airspace? With a constant litany of "WHOOP, WHOOP, PULL UP", counting those was tedious. Apparently the FAA licensed foreign pilot never bothered to read §91.117. What got me on that was, when he got to 1 nm final with a bit of flap, no gear and doing 260kts, @ 800'AGL, he finally decided to do a.... something, I know not what. It was best described as a wobbly RH wiggle to return to the same place in space, at same configuration, speed, and altitude, and then finally did a formal go around. Same guy decided to take off with all 3 IRS' with warnings on check position, and lost all nav functions when he hit the go bar.
KAL is an interesting place, it has some of the best engineers on the planet. It does have some institutional issues with a punitive culture, which is in keeping with being in a state of war for 70 years, so, they take punishment to a different level to what the west is used to.
There are some really good Korean pilots out there, a couple of the best are now dead, but they were brilliant. There are some that would stand their ground anywhere in the world, and do. There have been some excellent foreign pilots there, and there were some that used P-51 pretty enthusiastically. A number of foreigners were treated poorly by KAL, but not that much differently to how KAL treated Koreans, other than those that had F-5A time... You might be surprised by the statistics of events/nationality, and the absolutely dumb as dog dirt events that were done by [insert nationality]'s.
As far as this crew goes, I would think it prudent to hold off until more information is at hand before commenting on a given nationality's competency. Remember, it wasn't Indonesians or Ethiopians that designed the B/S system that ended up killing 346 people
On saving the day, there is one particular case where that certainly is a true statement, involves Stuart AFB. KAL additionally had a number of events where the decision of the PIC of non Korean nationality took a lot of effort to be swallowed.
The best helicopter pilots I ever flew with were Japanese, Japanese, French and Australian, in that order. The most impressive CRM I have ever evaluated was by a Russian pilot. The most beautiful set of hands I have ever seen fly an aircraft were attached to an Ethiopian, one who was also well known in the system, and who on entry into a room could make those red necked pilots that spent their time talking about skin colour fawn obsequiously, they had been fortunate to have this gifted man do instruction on their jumbo's. I had the previlidge of flying with Bob Hoover and Bob Love in a T28 and P51 on the same day, to have done training with "airbum" in his Pitts, and the Ethiopian landed a B744 in interesting conditions into JFK that were more impressive. The best TRI I have ever flown with was an Indian... the most knowledgable pilot I have ever worked with on aircraft technical matters was an Iranian.
You are welcome to your opinion, I think there is more to see when eyes are open.
