Birgenair Flight 301
I've just found this thread, so this ground may well have been covered already.
I flew for Birgenair (see wikipedia), a Turkish charter airline operating a 757 (among other aircraft) for a while in the 1990s. I felt at the time they would crash something fairly soon, and they did - the Flight 301 in February 1996.
The biggest single problem were the local captains, who were mostly accidents waiting to happen.
It's worth digging up the CVR transcript for Flight 301 to listen to the FO pleading with the captain to lower the nose and bring the TLs up from idle (the captain had a faulty ASI (blocked pitot) which was progressively reading higher as the aircraft climbed). The captain ignored him, lifted the nose higher and remained at idle until it was too late to recover. The aircraft stalled from around 8000 feet (from memory). The captain had also ignored the two serviceable ASIs.
I had a similar experience (among many others): Captain's ADC failed mid-Atlantic and the aircraft started behaving fairly oddly (oscillations in pitch). Other two sets of instruments normal. Captain stared at his instruments, which were behaving extremely oddly. After a short but decent interval (I had learned from previous incidents) I suggested he select alternate ADC. He said: "what's that?". I explained. He did, and the problem went away. He looked for ways of avenging this insult to his knowledge/abilities for the rest of the trip. The FO on the Flight 301 didn't intervene because he didn't dare - another problem for operations in that region.
Last edited by Muchheavierthanair; 21st Sep 2012 at 18:16.