To The Reverend N - Nothing about Indonesian pilots
I do not belive I posted any low-blow against Indonesian pilots. What I said was that I advised friends against flying on low-cost carriers in the Far-East, except those owned by the national carriers. The main reason for that was the fact I had little faith in these airlines.
My experience at OX really opened my eyes! Prior to then my knowledge of low-cost carriers consisted of what I know about Southwest, Westjet, and Jet Blue. I had thought all low-cost carriers were like them! The OX experience of course shattered that because I learned that not all carriers have equal selection and training process for pilots, and that there are blatant abuse of rules and regulations.
You will encounter good and not so good pilots everywhere. IMHO, even a pilot with good aircraft handling skills but bad airmanship is dangerous. Unfortunately we read about too many accidents that could have been easily avoided.
It is prudent for an airline to save money, but to save money by avoiding replacing defective parts or forcing pilots to exceed duty limitiations to avoid commercial deadheads and layover hotels is simply dangerous!
What I tried to explain (apparently not so successfully) was that becasue of our western background, the B752 pilots at OX spoke up when there were issues with maintenance and duty limitiations, whereas sometimes that did not happen with the B747 fleet. I could say very little about the MD-80 fleet since I left soon after they were introduced - the only facts I knew was that the MD-80 pay was lower than that for the B747/752 and the new-hire pilots were told that to expect 26 duty days a month! I suspect the main reason that the OX B752s were replaced by the MD-80s was the fact that us B752 pilots stood up against the management's abuse (Yes a MD-80 is cheaper to own and operate than a B-752 but it could not have been cheaper to have many more MD-80s than a few B-752s.) I am sure you have more knowledge of the abuse and corruptions that was happening...
From what I seen in Thailand, many Thais will simply do whatever they are asked and OX "management" took full advantage of that. I suspect that it is the same in many other countries in the region - from what I have read about Adam Air, it is a clone of OX. Obviously there are many more similar operations around. That is the main reason I have little faith in these low-cost carriers and advised friends against flying on them.
As I mentioned before, IMHO, the fault of the accident lies with the OX "management" for abusing the pilots and also with DCA for looking the other way.
Hopefully my ramblings have made more sense to you.
And again hopefully we will not read about similar accidents in the future...