A few facts:. .. .First, it's not only KAL who have experienced this recently. Some much better respected carriers are also worried about these issues at present.. .. .Second, for the benefit of akerosid, the system only provides an alert, it does nothing to 'prevent' take-off.. .. .Third, some aircraft have a wide range of flap settings available, for example flap 1 for a normal take-off and flap 15 for a short field. Most (all?) aircraft alerting systems do not check only that the flaps are not up, not that the correct flap setting has been deployed. This really isn't good enough. Bear in mind that there are significant human factors concerns over flap mis-setting. Usually, it must be said, you'll get airborne by the end of the strip, so long as you've got some flap down.. .. .Fourth, (as if it was needed), this is further proof that a two pilot flight deck, in which one pilot is disqualified from taking certain actions, or decisions, is downright dangerous. Regulators who require two pilots in the flight deck should legislate to ensure that they are both doing a worthwhile job. The FO in the incident mentioned, was not.. .. .Spam is right - it's only a matter of where, not if.. .. .Ironically, I can't help feeling that this is one area where press intervention could do some good - anyone from the local papers near Heathrow reading this?