Mr. Norman S. Fletcher:
Just curious about the context, but was it possible that after WW2, nations which had lost vast numbers of aircraft and people might be conditioned to the situation, because there is no more shooting to worrry about?
As for safety cultures in recent decades, even in the west, at least in the so-called advanced aviation culture in the US, safety is largely a function of an airline's upper mgmt leadership-or the focus is to be "mission/revenue oriented" with little tolerance for serious problems to be written up in the maintenance logbook... How much 'hull loss' insurance is carried for a single 100-seat jet? Maybe a half-billion dollars? And this is for those built in the 1960s. This covers a company from the standpoint of liability.
To listen to what many freight airline pilots had to deal with (flying Lears, even a DC-6 with an engine fire-but no request for help, no declaration of an emergency...this guy from "northwestern" Europe refused to tell me the name of his former employers here) and the lessor-known companies is almost hard to believe. But remember, the FAA's former philosophy was to regulate aviation while promoting it. Quite a contradiction. All top administrators are appointed by the boss who lives in the White House.
If a pilot's job might be terminated after he, to comply with the FARs and proper airmanship, declared an emergency with ATC due to an engine flame-out, or engine fire for a bit, because the FAA might then find glaring inconsistencies in aircraft maintenance records...then we tolerate third-world airline ops, if among smaller cargo or third-tier carriers.
At one very infamous carrier, both pilots and the FE had to show the company's owner that a DC-8 can not rotate without elevator hydraulic pressure-at first, he did not believe them, until they showed him the indicator and explained. The owner once flew a Lear, a two-pilot aircraft, by himself, and the various FAA Inspectors who noticed these and other flagrant violations were "allegedly" 'bought off' somehow-numerous times. Unwritten policies can cut as many safety corners as anything else. But unwritten policies can not be demonstrated to our 'friends' at the FAA. A lady pilot here who once flew cargo Falcons at a small company told me recently that a Captain she was working with had an engine which could not be started and he considered either an untrained-for high speed windmill start or a single engine takeoff...from zero airspeed! He was afraid of the company's reaction if he made a 'write up' in the logbook that the engine could not be started!
The FAA can live with 'allegedly' falsified maintenance records. The maint. records showing previous LE flap (slat) problems for the infamous TWA B-727 which departed controlled flight over Michigan, mysteriously appeared many years after the pilots (Hoot Gibson etc) were almost hung out to dry- and many, many US airline pilots believed that the NTSB's conclusions and Boeing's defense were honest and accurate.
This was revealed not many years ago in "Aviation Week & Space Tech.".
How much we forget, at least in US civil aviation, when the "pot calls the kettle black".
Last edited by Ignition Override; 19th Aug 2006 at 06:36.