Originally Posted by
tdracer
Years ago, shortly after the Gimli Glider incident, my then lead engineer made the comment that he'd fly anywhere with those pilots. His rational was, they were never going to make that mistake again, and once the emergency started, they performed brilliantly.
Loath as I am to take anything away from that crew's achievement, airmanship only got them so far. In that particular case there were two factors that were fortunate - not just a PIC who was a glider/sailplane expert, but also a FO who used to fly out of the Gimli airfield when he was in the military - as a decommissioned airfield it wasn't on their charts. Without the latter factor it wouldn't have mattered how good at handflying they were.
Don't get me wrong - the airmanship and CRM of this Asiana crew left a lot to be desired, but had the Gimli crew been a few thousand miles from known territory then the outcome might have been much less positive.