Half the big planes in the sky are "officially" made in the US, they are certified in the US, the other half are "officially" made in Europe certfied in Europe, the training procedures are created by the manufacturer, the airport process is largely created by the same supervising authorities, yes?
And then we are regularly told that the fact that quite a few pilots have insufficient hand flying skills is a fault of ... the koreans, the chinese, the brits, the french the whatever; Really? Each of the members of the AF447 crew was current on type, and trained in the country that manufactured the plane. Can each 59 year old ex-USAF captain sitting in the left hand seat look at the whole-bloooded american 200 hour boy-wonder in the right hand seat, and say with confidence that superboy can be absolutely trusted to hand fly better than the Air France or the Asiana guys did?
From the way the NTSB is talking, the Asiana pilots will probably be doing us the greatest favor of all - they can be used to show that something went wrong. Thus they can serve as an alibi to get the system changed - to get more hand-flying hours into the training, and more hand-flying into the everyday experience of airline pilots. They may even serve as an alibi for improving the next generation of glass cockpits, and -one can hope- better training of the SFO fire crew that will take into account the possible presence of supine survivors at a crash scene.
Edmund
Last edited by edmundronald; 12th Dec 2013 at 18:46.