Just or Punitive
 

Just finished reading "The Flying Kangaroo" by Jim Eames (good read) and what came across was how punitive the airline was at all levels, at least up until after the 707 had been introduced. It raises the question, what was the fall out for the BKK crew, and how would folks characterise the prevailing ethos in their workplace? ME airlines need no mention, the ethos is well understood.

The rumour of the time was that James Strong wanted the QF1 crew punted but that the then Chief Pilot (I think it was Ray Heineger but could have been Ian Lucas) stood up for them and insisted that this wasn’t the way we did business. Im not sure how accurate that is as I was a pretty junior 767 F/O at the time.

The prevailing ethos? Probably much the same as other airlines. Pilot managers are generally pretty good I think. How far their scope extends given the HR driven world we all inhabit these days is yet to be fully tested.

Don't know anything about the subject matter but take my hat off to Keg for his balanced response.
Restored faith in Pprune and above the usual level of crap posted here.

PPRuNe at its best!

James Strong was very supportive of the crew.

Yes indeed he was. He attended every monthly pilot recognition event ( Service pins, retirement etc) amd said he thoughly enjoyed the stories shared by the crew. Always went out of his way to say hello to me and have a short talk. I believed he genuinely loved QF. Very sad when he passed away.

I was flying in Gove when he was running the bauxite mine and I flew him across to Weipa a number of times. I found him then to be a friendly passenger who was very interested in the aircraft. From memory he took a few flying lessons with the Gove Flying Club in those (early 80's) days.

When he joined Qantas and was aboard an aircraft I was flying he always would come up the front and always addressed me by name, recalling our flights in Gove.

Did I agree with the way he ran the Qantas business? No, not always/often, but he remained a good communicator and usually made an effort to present information, good or bad, directly to the staff and I don't mean from a Pulpit or giant TV screen in 'The Street'.

As for the crew on the QF1. I'm not sure about the F/O and S/O but the Captain remained a line Captain on the 744 until his retirement a couple of years ago. For me, he was one of the best Training Captains I've flown with, but his methods didn't always appeal to everyone.

I got it from the horse's mouth that James Strong could not have been more supportive of the captain. It's worth noting that the same captain bid to fly OJH to the desert. He saw it as a form of closure.

Knowing him I’m sure he’d have submitted that bid with more than a chuckle! ;) :ok:

Folks,
The bloke who went in to bat for the Captain of OJH in Bangkok in a big way was the then head of Safety and the Environment. Without his intervention I am absolutely certain said OJH Captain would have been very lonely.
I speak from being there, at the time.
As it was, it was an unnecessarily long time before those involved were returned to service.
After the rebuild, OJH was the best performing airframe in the fleet, and no, before anybody says it, OJH was nowhere near a economic write-off.
Tootle pip!!

PS: For most airlines, the default position is" Keep the shiny side up and don't scratch it - no excuses".
A "no blame culture" will always be very difficult to find, after an accident. Just ask the Captain of the QF A380 at Singapore immediately after --- and he had to repeat his route check, because CASA decided he "had assistance".

Just a tad of assitance ???
 

How could anyone not realise the the Capt. of the QF A380 had more than just " assistance"
He had some of the most experienced QF A380 drivers helping him!!!
That's the sort of good luck a lot of us would like to have if faced with a similar situation.
Probably a good call from CASA IMOP.:=:=:=

Or that it may just be check policy....

Yet Strong saved the job of a Manager who flooded two floors of a hotel in Sydney Olympic Park a few months out from the Olympics as part of a 'prank' - apparently turned the fire hose on a colleague and couldn't turn it off - causing at least $100K damage... the Crew were doing their job. I'm not sure Strong is as great as people make him out to be - I don't see many things he did at Qantas that made it a better company, in fact, probably the opposite. However, I find that he didn't support the Captain to be hard to digest as I know he was very, very supportive of the HoS&E mentioned previously by another poster who would have told Strong the Captain needed to be supported even if Strong was inclined not to (which it appears he wasn't).

Agreed... I know the HoS you're talking about well... a good bloke and this is exactly what he would do - and he would have been quite vocal about it and not cared about the consequences for himself. A very loyal person and a top bloke that always had your back.

I stand corrected from my comment then... except the bit about the bloke and the flood.

Ive had a couple of people message me to let me know that James Strong was in fact quite supportive of Jack and the crew. Apologies for casting aspersions.

KL? .

Ken Borough
Precisely. And still alive and well and firing on all eight.
Tootle pip!!

Thanks LS. That’s good to hear. I think of him everytime I pass through Security at airports. One day he was in Melbourne, travelling light with just a briefcase when he was bailed up by those who are there to protect us from evil. The problem was he was carrying a tool kit good enough to repair a B747! :}

Yep. That's the one.

How many senior managers have had the experience and all round knowledge of, flight attendant, engineer (sure I was told that), a meteorologist with work experience in Antarctica and I believe he had ATPL.

I believe JS liked him once he found out about his mountain climbing experience as well.

I liked his greeting, 'landings equal takeoffs.

Back to topic.

I always thought of that accident as being the fairly logical outcome of some fairy stupid policies that existed at the time. So, if they wanted to shove the crew off the end of the gang plank, they should have been joined by a number of management and training people.