I think from your previous posts its because you are a nieve little precious soul. Stay on the ground you will feel safer, hate to think you would be exposed to all those mobile phones and smoking pax. You must have had a sheltered childhood. The People in your employ must feel very lucky, oh the power!!!!

Ironbutt..Strange you should make that observation about the grooming manager. Just recently i.e. in the last few weeks, speaking to the CC I have heard similar allegations and ridiculous stories about her so called standards. In order to justify her new position there are letters flying around calling people to the office for the most trivial of things.
BIRDSEED not trying to hide anything but when someone exaggerates pax smoking and mobile phones on a 40 min flight it needs to be treated for what it is, sensationalist!! If mobile phones bother you then don't fly in the gulf cause you can tell them to switch them off til you are blue in the face. As for smoking, are you seriously telling me this does not happen EVERYDAY on EVERY airline. Next topic please.:zzz:

Pontious

I will take issue with your claims.

I have flown 106 intra gulf flights with Gulf Air in the last 12 months. While I have frequently witnessed mobile phones being used or ringing (I have even forgot to switch mine off on more than one occasion) I have never, I will repeat that so you get it, NEVER seen any pax smoking.
While the cabin crew have difficulty with mobile phones I doubt if there would be any truck with smoking.

Incidently, Emirates have decided that they are to allow the use of mobile phones on their aircraft. So where's the safety problem.

Now many members of this forum will know that I am not an employee or appologist for Gulf Air, what I am is a regular flyer with them and I personally do not have any issue with their safety.

On On

I wouldn't say it is all rosy here at GF, but I would say we are holding our own. We are not subsidized, nor do we have airport duty free on our books. Despite this we made a profit! I've met a gaggle of new-hire pilots that have joined the airline. I foresee the manpower issue will soon be a non-issue. We're getting a bonus! and a pay raise! I am confident that any incident investigations will be conducted and presented in an unbiased and transparent manner.
Coming up 2 decades and still having a ball!!

On the subject of incident reports, has the full report on GF072 ever been published? Its only been 5 years though. Maybe we could keep this thread going till 2010 and find out the truth.

ia1166,

This report was on the Bahrain airport website a couple of years ago.

ACCIDENT INVESTIGATION REPORT
Gulf Air Flight GF-072
Airbus A320-212, REG. A40-EK
on 23 August 2000 at Bahrain

Shaikh Ali bin Khalifa Al Khalifa
Minister of Transportation
Chairman, Accident Investigation Board Manama Kingdom of Bahrain 10 July 2002



Is that the one you were waiting for?

Mutt

Is it accurate and transparent to quote the above? I don't think anybody has accepted liability.

Hopefully it will say that the Captain should not have been near an airport, let alone an airplane.

GF072 conclusions
 

Accident report essentially ascribes this CFIT to GF management in terms of lack of training and supervision, & poor/nonexistent CRM.

Yes, it may be true this captain shouldn't have been in this job, but whose fault is that? Just because he got away with that level of incompetence for so long shows that management didn't (or couldn't) do their job.

Exactly. Nothing changed then.

ia166 are you so bored you need to bring up something which happened 5 years ago? You know better than anyone how much has changed and how the training/crm is now. You were responsible for some of it for god's sake! Don't turn into a bitter ex employee it does not suit you. Sure it's not perfect but it's as good as any in the area. I don't hear you talking about EK's Jo'burg incident 18months ago, still no report on that and the guys are going back online soon. That was as close to a hull loss as you can get. You will be bringing up the Hindenberg incident next:p

Yes you are right. everything in the training department has changed and in my humble and irrelevent opinion GF's training department is among the best. But has the culture changed? This could be a good litmus test.

Why should any culture change?
Look around the world...the Arabs seem to be in far better shape than many.....and they seem quite well off.

Uh...that probably should read "Corporate Culture" Not Arabic Culture. Nothing here ever intended a slur on any ethnicities...Only internal policies as they USED to be.

"Seem" being the keyword.........and why, and by whom?

GF-072
 

Glad to have seen that post - I had missed the "results" previously and had wondered if our "guesses" at the time (spatial disorientation) were correct.

We all make mistakes, but the Skipper and FO on that one didn't get the chance to learn from them - they paid with their lives:(

Sympathy as always to all the lost and to their loved ones. Hopefully their losses will make the industry safer and do some good.

Sim guy....The two previous fatal accidents on straight in approaches to landing into rw12 Bahrain at night by Air France DC4's were attributed to the Black Hole effect you mention on the pilots on a long overwater straight in night approach.
As a result of these crashes Gulf Aviation introduced a standing order that its crews would always use an ILS with glideslope indication if within aircraft and weather limits and available, on all future company approaches.
If not within aircraft limits but within weather limits the full overhead instrument procedure was to be flown and not a long night over water final into a black hole effect.
After Gulf Aviation became Gulf Air and expanded and new trainers took over this standing order over time was nolonger enforced as they told me... "It wastes time and it is uneconomic"
I agreed, and ignored them for 23years and luckily nobody complained.
The three qualified national A320 pilots on GF073 were all reported to have been affected by Somatogravic effect on their inner ears by the aircraft acceleration and then all overwhelmed by the various aircraft attitudes,gyrations, and accelerations.
Please correct me if I am wrong but I think the black hole effect is a different animal to Somatogravic effect.
Importantly I do not think Somatogravic effect can be induced in the A320 simulator and trained for but the Black hole effect can.
Sometimes we all have to get on the gauges and scanscanscan to survive.

SSS - not sure what the Black Hole Effect means, but in the sims, we are limited to some 10 feet of movement in any direction (unless training centres have got a lot bigger!!)

So we "simulate" acelleration by actually putting the nose of the sim up (after initially moving the cabin forwards "surge" to give the right idea) but don't "nose up" the visual or the instruments. (you've probably been in sims so you know what I mean). Pilot feels some of his weight on his back and asumes (especially with the instruments and visuals to back up the idea) that he is accellerating.

In the "real world", the opposite can happen - you feel the weight on your back and assume you are climbing, when in fact you may be diving and accellerating - as I always suspected happened in this tragedy.

The "sim" effect can be demonstrated by having a couple of healthy guys "chair" a blindfolded guy. They lift him up quite quickly, the very slowly lower him to close to the ground, do this again, then he is told to "jump down". He jumps as if he is a couple of feet from the ground but finds he hits the ground almost immediately.

Sorry if I'm teaching some Grandmothers to suck eggs, but I felt it's a worthwhile explanation to post.

As you say - "scan, scan" (and scan again, to be sure!)

Stu

There was no ILS installed on RWY 12 at OBBI at the time....the crew simply operated outside SOP's regarding go-around procedures, and became disoriented in the process...any amount of experience wouldn't have prevented the disorientation, but it would have maybe helped the crew recognize the potential for this to occur, and helped them recover from it....

Somatogravic illusion is a very powerful sensation. With visual clues it is hard to supress, with no clues almost impossible. This is why the 'black hole effect' is relevant.