DHL
The DHL "airline" director obviously has no clue what he is doing! Again. (I could comment on the "maintenance" of the fleet but will reserve that for future). Okay, so he flew to Mosul and spent a night in the military base, BIG WHOOP!! Try flying into and out of said base regularly. Bet he had to change his underwear on landing anyway.
The fact remains that regardless of how many measures you take on the ground, that the REAL danger is while in the air, on approach and departure. All very well to have published company "procedures" regarding arrivals and depature from these airfields. Management know all too well that the DHL procedures are hardly ever followed due to the volume of traffic and US military controllers giving absurd instructions like "descent to 4000ft" while still 10-15 NM out from any given field. As long as the job gets done.. Worse still, some DHL pilots actually comply with these ATC instructions! It boggles the mind why anyone would be so stupid as to not realise that, as soon as one of the DHL aircraft get shot out of the sky, while tootling along at 4000 ft AGL over very hostile territory, that DHL and the "life insurers" will wash their hands clean of any liability by reminding your grieving widow and children/parents that you did not follow company procedure and that they are, "unfortunately" not entitled to any financial payout.
I say, comply with the procedure, if unable to complete the full procedure due to traffic etc, divert and return to homebase. Watch the pressure mount when you actually comply with written company procedures and the job does not get done.... I believe that you would be "invited to resign" by the airline manager rather quickly, as demonstrated by him recently when crew refused to fly to Mosul after the mortar attack. Same goes for flying into Iraq at night, WRITTEN DHL company procedures state clearly that no night flying in Iraq is allowed, how is then that certain flights are planned into Iraq at night? How is it that certain crew accept these flights? Because the usual spin is "that particular field is perfectly safe, even at night", okay, which of the other DHL procedures can we choose to ignore then in the future??