terrain terrain pullup
 

So one outfit here keeps setting off the ATC terrain warning alarms on 25R. The count is more than 20 times now, and it is not a small operator. No one who should take action are doing anything, the regulator just doesn't how to act, the pax deserve better. Whats with the crews not acting? seems they have no clue how close they are getting to terrain. If you bust MSA by a few hundred feet on an approach you are playing with fire, especially in summer if you get caught in weather. No one going to intervene?, or we wait for the HK cleaners to wipe up the pax from the rocks. You would think someone who monitors this stuff would act, its just insane. Read a CFIT accident report and this is what you read in them, the inaction of all parties, the crews should be taken to task, as well as those who monitor it.

My initial guess would be that the crews you refer to (and I don't know which airline you are alluding to ...) are probably of the 'process and procedure' mindset i.e. they can cope with the book learning of rules, regulations, SOPs, and suchlike. However, they are not good with common sense, instinct, situational awareness, bigger picture stuff.

Additionally, if things are running on rails, these crews will probably cope okay, but if events move towards the 'edge of the envelope', they begin to dissemble, likely becoming stunned and surprised by what is happening. In the panic, with no time to 'look it up on Google', they will continue to push buttons in the hope that whatever has surprised them will go away. They are, unfortunately, utterly reliant on technology to do their thinking. Furthermore, deeply ingrained ideas of avoiding embarrassment, combined with face-saving ways of pushing the blame onto someone, or something, else means lessons are not identified and learned.

Does that help?

In the 90's in CX there was a somewhat "robust" approach by the management to hard GPWS warnings such that the black humour joke was that the Cathay GPWSs were modified to say "whoop whoop - resign"!!

Not at all surprised to read of the terrain encounters. One would imagine that this would set off alarm bells, but then that would only occur in a well functioning flight operations environment.

As a long time trainer (since resigned in 2021) I had a front row seat to the declining quality of flying standards. As is well laid out in thousands of posts on this forum, a nefarious management with a penchant for hating their pilots, embarked on a deliberate course of sacrificing pilot quality on the alter of cost cutting. A linear decline in qualitative pilot recruiting standards occurred over time and culminated in the lowest possible pilot hiring standard among legacy airlines….zero pilot experience required for a new hire.

Over time the new pilots I trained went from being highly experienced pilots, that only required minor assistance adopting to a new airline and aircraft type, to neophytes without flying experience that required basic flying instruction. I found myself conducting basic pilot training on a fully loaded airliner while flying into hostile environments of thunderstorm avoidance, typhoons, snow covered runways, poor ATC, high density airports, and high terrain.

Operational excellence began to border on the bizarre. As long as the airplane remained on the published STAR/Transition things remained relatively stable; however, a direct clearance off of the expected routing would quickly unravel the inexperienced candidate. Instead of recalculating the track miles and selecting an appropriate mode to manage the descent, most would simply push as many buttons as possible and pray. Terrain and situational awareness were completely lost. I often found myself challenged to the point where I simply could not talk fast enough…physical intervention was often necessary to stabilize an approach. It became an exhausting and mind numbing existence.

Complaining to the flight ops leadership team was met with resistance and denial. It was obvious that most flight ops managers became pusillanimous cheerleaders for their mendacious overlords. In days past we were encouraged to train pilots up to a legacy standard. That concept dwindled over time as we became challenged just teaching pilots enough to achieve the minimum standard. The concept that safety was the airline’s top priority became farcical.

Throughout today’s airline industry the sad decline of a once great airline has become a cautionary tale of how a misguided management can devastate a legacy corporation.

Sounds like CX’s ‘AF447 moment’ is not a matter of if but when.

CX pilots letting the automation fly the aeroplane, not watching closely enough and having the competence to takeover quickly enough. We are a crash waiting to happen.

Raven11, an extremely accurate and eloquent summation.
It will come as no surprise, but the small section of your post that I quoted above, was what most line Captains also experienced on an increasing level as the years went by. It was sad to feel such an insidious but gradual decline in competence experience and standards, and despite having left CX some years ago, it feels like I’m watching a slow speed train wreck, which most of us believe will culminate as a CFIT. It’s a sad demise of a once great and prestigious airline.

Manufacturers deliberately set about creating aircraft that most any fool can fly and they almost succeeded. Flew with quite a few "join the dot" 400 hour newbies who could read an ECAM and quote an FCOM line and verse without having a clue what it meant.

Hopefully, following the Boeing MCAS cluster we can say they almost pulled it off. But good ol’ airbus is still thinking they can do it with single pilot ops

And it continues, more busts, more he said she said

What's the criteria for setting off this ATC terrain warning? Just curious. Is it always at a specific waypoint on the ILS or the RNAV transition?

Let me ask, out of interest, what action you've taken to report it?

There are known problems with the integrity of the ILS signals at VHHH which are mentioned on the charts, with the terrain surrounding the airport this isn’t a good combination. For the pilots based there who are familiar with the airport the risk is slightly less than for those who only operate there occasionally. Perhaps it’s time for some restrictions such as a SIM training session with currency requirements or minimum experience levels before operating in there.