Answer to your original question:
What makes (made) Air Serv fly in unsafe conditions?
Answers that apply to flying out of Goma in the DRC:
No hazmat training.
Mutliple aircrafts would fly IFR in the clouds without precisely knowing where traffic was.
ATC was of little help, mostly a distraction. (Ok, that's not Airserv's fault perhaps)
Weather info is/was provided to pilots by untrained, unknowledgeable ground staff. Case in point: On a flight from Goma to Shabunda, I was advised while enroute that weather at destination was "perfect" (whatever that means?!) only to find myself flying through thunderstorms and to discover Shabunda in low clouds/patchy fog/mist etc.
Flight dispatchers sometime would have us load AC to max gross in Goma and would have us land in Bukabu (a 15 minute flight) over max landing weight (Applies to C208).
Flight dispatchers had mostly no aviation knowledge and kept arguing with pilots.
Fuel consumption was underestimated by flight dispatchers and left little room to maneuver around weather.
Best of all... Airserv conducted lengthy interviews with its future pilots in Warenton to ensure the quality of its pilots yet they subcontracted some flights to outsiders for which no background was readily available.
Another case in point: On a flight from Goma to Entebbe via Kigali I was a front passenger in a C210 owned by AirServ and flown that day by a MAAF pilot who had been asked to replace a sick AirServ pilot (actually the Air Serv Chief Pilot who lived in Entebbe). We took off from rwy 18 in Goma in marginal VFR and quickly were in the clouds. The pilot was flying straight into high elevation terrain towards Kigali so I told him to change course immediately (to fly South and to climb over lake Kivu before turning E). The pilot thanked me for helping and admitted that he had not looked forward to the flight because he was unfamiliar with the area since he was usually flying in Uganda. Later the pilot flew the approach in Kigali below glideslope and below the VASI (ok, it was marginal VFR but it shows bad piloting). I did not say anything that time. Arriving in Entebbe he landed the aircraft ahead of a displaced threshold line... The other occupants not being pilots did not notice anything but I thought that this "AirServ flight" could have been a total nightmare and was glad that I was occupying a front seat. I told the story of the flight to management in Goma later on but no one seemed concerned about it!
So what sort of company asks a stranger to go fly their aircraft with passengers into an area that they feel uncomfortable with?
Last edited by aime; 4th Nov 2013 at 01:31.
Reason: Spell Check