Airblue down near Islamabad

[Captain-Crunch]

International etiquette

Exactly denlopviper,

There's not just one way to do everything. US Intn'l non-radar guidance the AIM allows several methods of course reversal, procedure turn etc; all up to the pilot on how to accomplish them as long as he remains within protected airspace IIRC. And every airline operation is different. In the states the airline's FAA POI may or may not grant permission for interpretations of FAR to the particular airlines advantage. He'll consider a lot of things before making his decision on whether or not to grant relief or concurrence with the stated request.

The going outside the airport's reported vis in statue miles (say vis is 2sm) is a good example. If your outfit allows you to do it, then it's up to the crew to stay within the (obstacle) protected airspace area and keep visual with the airport area and the terrain. We had a stipulation on us, by our POI's judgement, that we had to first identify the landing runway threshold before we could venture further out into protected airspace (to loosen up the pattern). That was if the pilot's vis was better than reported by the airport. As other posters have commented, this means you might loose sight of the runway briefly in the turns, in the real world.

In Pakistan, who knows what the local procedures are as practiced by the local carriers as governed by their CAA? We were about to find out until one of us started shouting "You're not a pilot" because you said 12 mile DME arc.... etc

Which of course, is not what he said.

I mean, English is a second language for the guy. In the dozens of countries I flew into it was a common truth that you couldn't just take the guy's verbage literally. You had to ask the question several different ways several times to figure out what he means. But being polite was essential.

In Pakistan, it's been said in this thread, that the head of Defense was also the head of PIA. If true, it would likely follow that the Defense minister's son would get trained in the sim, since he was a cadet already, and fly positioning flights for the airline. Can he call himself a legal pilot? No. But I've been at airlines where Captain's sons and mechanics, FAA guys, Flight Engineers, board members, flight attendants and doctors all flew the equipment a little bit in the old days. Then on their days off, they might fly GA airplanes for free as co-pilot to gain experience.

If that's the case, then why run this guy off in such a rude fashion? Deposing his every word as if he was on trial? Just because he took a little "journalistic license?" Most flying rags in the US are the same. Many journos admire and pretend to be "pilots" since they once touched the controls of a jet for an article. O.K, we know he's a journalist as he stated that from the start. I've read his stuff, and it's 100 percent better than the trash that's aired by CNN or FOX for example, with non-flying journos. I agree with Meekal's last sentiment especially, that the airmen I knew of the old established trunk airlines, were polite, well-educated, articulate gentlemen, who would not exclude from the going conversation others in the industry with different backgrounds or different responsibilities. This guy's family background was in government and maybe journalism, and he no doubt flew various aircraft at the field for his father, so his father's background certainly is relative.

And to make the insulting comment that he is not entitled to have an opinion about or criticize his own government ("you hate the gov" )is the height of exaggeration. His remarks here on PPRuNe were all in the context of, and related to, air safety, as he cited numerous examples of covered-up accidents (that I never even knew occurred); it was not some vendetta against the government imho.

Then there's this bizarre attitude, held by some, that mountains 4,000 feet high only a couple miles from the edge of the pan-ops protection zone are not really "mountains near the airport" and don't justify a safety backup like airborne weather radar. Let's say he was shaving mountains, hills, whatever, at 7nm. At 180 kts zero wind, he would be doing 3nm/min. But let's just say, hypothetically, he starts the circle too high, and up high, there's a twenty-knot quartering tailwind (just for the worst-case sake of argument), so now we're doing say, 190 kts ground speed or 3.16 nm/min. Maybe that's only 45 seconds or less to impact past the 5.x pan ops obstacle protected area. Right?

But glass pilots never think about wind while hand flying and making turns, because none of them ever has the ROSE display up, where you can look at a full compass rose (especially the back side as it's rotating) and say to yourself, O.K., the wind up here is out of 090 at twenty knots, since I told the F/O to quit dickin with the electric toys and instead just roll in the runway 12 heading in the FCP course window; BEHOLD: I now can now tell, at a glance, map shift or no, whether or not I remembered to turn downwind. I also can tell, since I never fly on autopilot much, that since the 090 is now to the right of my tail that this next turn to base will have to start way early, since the wind will now be trying to push me into those hills that don't qualify as "terrain close to the airport".

Egads, just how many airframes do I know of, still sitting there around the world, in hills ten miles from the airport? Dozens. But these Brave Sim Gods, in their Proud Simulators have never hiked up there and looked at them. These brave new Pushbutton Pilots of Tomorrow, think map shift and distraction are impossible.

411a is right. Basic airmanship no longer exists at many airlines who swallow the "automation will always save you" argument that is peddled by some manufacturers. Honeywell glass is a horrible distraction and insidious additive crutch even when everything works right. As these airframes get older, more and more distracting anomalies are going to plague a crew already in high-workload operations.

The above are just all my opinions only.

CC