Folks (which includes any women here)
Let us not get carried away with this 30,000 hour and I-can-do-no-wrong because of all my hours thing.
I knew this pilot, Capt Siraj, very senior in PIA with probably around the same amount of air-time, flew with him many times, no non-pertinent chatter at any time, leave alone below 10,000, and he was considered to be rock-solid. He flew the same ILS to 30 we are talking about into Islamabad (or are we?) in a 747-200 in and out of early morning Islamabad mist (so ATC could not see him) and made one of his trade-mark feather-light touch-downs -- (yes, I know it is preferable to fly it on with a sink of about -300fpm rather than go into an extended flare and try for the greaser which takes up a lot of real estate) except that he forgot to put his gear down.
Slid down the runway, kept it on the center-line and everyone was fine.
Passengers said it was a "normal landing".
Boeing put jacks under her and fixed her and she flew on for many years until she was scrapped.
I still remember the last letter on her tail. "Whiskey".
That intrigued many non-alcoholic drinking Pakistani's (mind you, there are many others who are NOT non-alcoholic, especially in PIA!), who were convinced that the registration was jinxed.
As someone said, if you have 30,000 hours (which I am guessing since Capt. Pervez Choudhry in command of the Airblue A321 had retired from PIA some years ago and must have had a life-time of flying in PIA), it does not mean you are a good or a great pilot but only that you "survived". A pretty sobering thought (if you will forgive the pun).
Indeed, looking at the recent spate of air accidents are you folks not struck by the high-time the captain has? I was reading the ditching of the Tunisian ATR-72 recently. He had 5,000 hours in command on-type and he ran out of fuel!
The ex-pat at Maglore had, I think, around 10,000 hours. The captain on the Afriquah A330 was pretty high-time too.
Many years ago, on the inaugural PIA flight to Cairo, the senior-most PIA pilot of the time, No. 1, Capt. A. A. Khan under-shot the runway and killed all the dignitaries except for five passengers.
So what does this all mean for flight safety?
I would welcome your views.
When you see your captain with deep facial lines (even if botox is the new option), gray/white hair and maybe walking with a limp (like John Wayne in "Fate is the Hunter"), should you feel you are in safe hands as opposed to some jock with a jaunty walk and arrogance and a crocked smile about him?