PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - KLM 737 @t EHAM & Aeroflot 737 @ ENGM taxiway take-off
Old 18th Feb 2010, 15:17
  #127 (permalink)  
Steve Michell
 
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Europe
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Dutch arrogant

Arrogance has nothing, I repeat nothing, to do with a crew using a taxiway for Take off.

Was is relevant is authority gradient (i.e. Tenerife), cockpit procedures, ATC and downright leadership of the Captain.

ATC Amsterdam airport has created a qualifying airport for some carriers. Not taxiway layout, but loose and weird ATC procedures and annoying reprimand of (mostly) foreign Captains. Not forgetting the dozen or so aerodrome procedural pages it has created (ridiculous for an airport without obstacles and/or extreme air-traffic volumes).
Cockpit procedures are Boeing. The question is wether cockpit procedures were adhered to.
Leadership on the flight deck. Now, arrogant or not, former civilan flight school trained pilots lack a broad view of aviation, but were taught KLM culture and procedures from the start. KLM culture always has been: as long as the calls and procedures were performed correctly everything is OK, no matter what the outcome of the flight. You can see a disaster in the making. No blame to narrowly trained so-called professional KLM pilots, it's beyond their scope of what aviation is. It's the system stupid! That creates this kind of pilots. They have heard day-in-day-out during their initial flight training that they are the best of the crop, the best pilots in the world, aces, no less. That is where their arrogance comes from. And it is this attitude and the underlying training that is absolutely relevant in this near-disaster. Go figure two self-proclaimed aces on any flight deck with a lack of self criticism..... That is where leadership comes in.

Then one remark about on fatigue. KLM pilots have the best contract in the world. Netherlands taxes are so high that almost no self respecting KLM pilot is working a normal 100% contract because most earned euro's are so heavily taxed that a full job hardly worthwhile. So they take a parttime contract option of 50-80% making the suggestion of fatigue ridiculous.

Let's wait and see what the Netherlands District Attorney will raise to prosecute the pilot(s). Investigation by a objective truth finding board is not possible under Dutch Law. Thanks to too little effort of Netherlands pilot union VNV to change this.

SM
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