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Old 9th Jul 2013, 01:08
  #1003 (permalink)  
framer
 
Join Date: Sep 2008
Location: 41S174E
Age: 57
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Quote:
What scares me about all this is that these are apparently 'professional' crews from ALL different cultures and backgrounds who seem incapable of keeping a perfectly airworthy aircraft in the air when faced with what amount to very very minor defects or unservicabilities.
This all comes down to bean counters who want to reduce training costs - this is then a 'customer requirement' and the training companies compress the training, the manufacturers put in more automation allowing less training. And none of these people will think that they are creating a flight safety problem they will congratulate themselves on 'keeping the company profitable'. The post cold war military and boomer generation of pilots is now at retirement and are being replaced by pilots who have only been under the bean counter regime of absolute minimum training. It is starting to apparent in the statistics. Unfortunately, the bean counters will only react when the costs of the crashes exceed the savings in training - unless someone gives them some 'guidance' first.
That is aviations greatest challenge for the next decade summed up beautifully in one short post . A real obstacle to overcoming the current situation is that the people making the safety critical decisions don't understand what flying an airliner is about. They think they do, but unless they've done it, all but a few won't get it.
Airline bosses used to be pilots, then when business folk stepped up Chief Pilots had clout and backbone and their decisions were respected. Now days they are hand picked to be compliant. So the people making the decisions aren't aware of what is required to fly an airliner day in, day out for thirty years and avoid having an incident. They are normally unaware of the frailties / limitations and biases of their own brains, the number of errors they make while driving their car or typing a letter, or how any of that applies to consistently providing safe air transport in all weather conditions.
As long as we have people at the helm with zero flying experience the problem will persist and accidents ( crashes is a more appropriate word) like Lion Air, Air France, and Asiana will increase dramatically as the older , well trained generation of pilots retire.
That's my take on it anyway.
framer is online now