Good points Iso. But the performance of twenty pilots out of hundreds or thousands certainley cannot be claimed to be representative of any one group as a whole. The sample error of course could be very high. The 20 came from various carriers within the Indonesian republic.
But assuming for the moment the twenty were a reasonable cross-section, and given Indonesias air safety record, what then could be the cause? I suggest 3 possible ones:
a) Racial culture
b) Religious fatalism
c) Training culture
Racial culture I dont think is an issue. We have seen the Indonesians ability to assert themselves in the recent political crises. The Asian value of respect for authority was present in the sim evaluations but not to the same degree as say KAL, where culture plays a major componant of detriment to Korean air safety. I might go as far to say that Indonesian culture, from what we saw, actualy improved CRM by handling emergencys without any yelling or rude insistances between pilots. Stress was well coped with.
Religious fatalism I must admit was expected after reading the Indonesian report on Silkair 185 from Professer (Ive forgotten his name. Was it Darian?) who stated in part "....religous fatalism plays a large part of our culture" (forgive me if the actual wording is not accurate). But we found absolutley none of this during the sim exercises. However it could be argued religous fatalism explains why everything was handled in a calm manner ("itll be Gods will whatever we do"). But take other States with similar religious cultures such as the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait. There we see a very reasonable standard of flight crew if statistics are anything to go on. So in this case I dont see this kind of fatalism as being the blame. It might very well be down there, but we didnt see it here.
Training culture I believe is the problem. Every pilot is only as good as his training. Bad training means a bad pilot. If the standard of a pilot is considered high in a country whos standards are low ICAO-wise, then its only normal that that pilots perception of his own standard will be a false one.
From the feedback we obtained from the guys at post-brief, it appears the standard of training and the standard required itself are quite low. No one had ever had V1 or Vmcg cuts. Normal endorsement and sim check cuts are at Vr or gear up selection. Raw data is never flown as sim rides at home always included the FD on, and never off. They believed this therefore to be the world norm, and were quite surprised that the exercises required them to have the FD remain off from engine start to shutdown. A jammed elevator is only given as a cruise exercise only. As long as the QRH is read thats all thats required. Again I state this was direct feedback from the pilots themselves.
Wether corruptive practices plays a part in Indon standards I do not know nor will I comment on, due to my lack of any RELIABLE evidence.
One good point noted was that each and every candidate demonstrated a very high knowledge of the 737 aircraft and its systems when tested in this area. It was quite good indeed. However this knowledge just didnt seem to exist when applying QRH procedure.