EK safety culture
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Join Date: Oct 1999
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EK safety culture
Been thinking about joining EK. Leaving aside the obvious issues of lifestyle, t&c's etc, I would like to know what the safety culture is like at EK. Once I have given up my job here in Europe and moved my family across, it would be very frustrating to constantly fly in fear of making any errors that will get me fired. With my current airline the reporting culture is quite open, and most of the time - other than unstable approaches or perhaps a very serious lapse in judgment (gross neglect) - you will not be dismissed. Things like flap overspeeds, level busts, taxi speed exceedance, hard landings, go-arounds, diversions, landing with low reserve fuel, landing long, minor load sheet errors, tech log errors, etc etc are almost every day events at my airline with 1500+ sectors a day, which are mostly reported. Even the guys that skidded into a light post in AMS were still with the airline afterwards. So what sort of errors, reported by crew or others or picked up by flight data monitoring, would get you dismissed in EK? I know for example with Qatar, just not wearing your cap on the turnarounds can mean instant dismissal. Or what about failing a sim check? Don't get me wrong, I have been flying around for many years without any incident or serious errors, but it would be nice to know that you'd get some support from management, although I assume that the fact of not having a union certainly has a strong influence.
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Taking pictures of your crew and aircraft during your turn around could already be the end of your career with EK . Wrong time, wrong place, meet the wrong guy and you could be binned.
( CMB case)
( CMB case)
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Safety is reactive, not pro-active.
They have invested a great deal of time and effort into our 'Crisis management/response team' in a tacit acceptance that a hull loss is going to happen.
Too big, too fast with Jo'burg, Melbourne and numerous wake up calls in between. Knackered crew, factoring to numerous destinations with inexperienced crew.
Support from management? TCAS? TCTC? Even a minor incident is up for a disciplinary or termination. Follow SOPs but if a human factor is involved that **** TCAS will leave you out to dry... all for the price of a diamond encrusted Rolex and other 'incentives'.
Open culture? Open to abuse and very little regulation from the regulator.
Safety? It just a question of money.
They have invested a great deal of time and effort into our 'Crisis management/response team' in a tacit acceptance that a hull loss is going to happen.
Too big, too fast with Jo'burg, Melbourne and numerous wake up calls in between. Knackered crew, factoring to numerous destinations with inexperienced crew.
Support from management? TCAS? TCTC? Even a minor incident is up for a disciplinary or termination. Follow SOPs but if a human factor is involved that **** TCAS will leave you out to dry... all for the price of a diamond encrusted Rolex and other 'incentives'.
Open culture? Open to abuse and very little regulation from the regulator.
Safety? It just a question of money.
Last edited by Marooned; 7th Oct 2010 at 19:10.
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Comanche, you will not be 'fired' for ANY of the things you mention in your post.
If that was the case, we clearly wouldn't have any pilots left! You may well be fired for landing deep from a VERY unstable approach instead of going around, but then why should any company be kind to folks who blatantly put peoples lives at risk by doing crap that is dangerous?
There was a lot of knee-jerking after the MEL incident (which IMHO was a crass cock-up, clearly not following SOPs, and ignoring Airmanship -- Flex 74c on a 14 hour flight???? Come on guys!!), and I agree that the MAN guys - especially the F/O under training should not have been fired, the ACC guys were subsequently re-instated.
Basically, if you go to work, do your job professionally, stick to the rules, exercise good judgement and airmanship, stay 'above the line', and keep your head down, you will be left well alone - as in any airline... If you go to work, don't follow procedures/rules, and make a stupid error nearly killing 300 people, then good luck to you, you are now on your own!! - as in any airline!!
We all make mistakes (yes including me), none of us can say we have ever achieved a 'perfect' flight, yet we're still employed!! Why is that?
Hope this clears things up for you?
If that was the case, we clearly wouldn't have any pilots left! You may well be fired for landing deep from a VERY unstable approach instead of going around, but then why should any company be kind to folks who blatantly put peoples lives at risk by doing crap that is dangerous?
There was a lot of knee-jerking after the MEL incident (which IMHO was a crass cock-up, clearly not following SOPs, and ignoring Airmanship -- Flex 74c on a 14 hour flight???? Come on guys!!), and I agree that the MAN guys - especially the F/O under training should not have been fired, the ACC guys were subsequently re-instated.
Basically, if you go to work, do your job professionally, stick to the rules, exercise good judgement and airmanship, stay 'above the line', and keep your head down, you will be left well alone - as in any airline... If you go to work, don't follow procedures/rules, and make a stupid error nearly killing 300 people, then good luck to you, you are now on your own!! - as in any airline!!
We all make mistakes (yes including me), none of us can say we have ever achieved a 'perfect' flight, yet we're still employed!! Why is that?
Hope this clears things up for you?
Join Date: Feb 2005
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There is no safety culture not since they fired JG.
They now have a representative from Fleet on any safety debriefs, talk about the fox guarding the hen house. It is all about apportioning blame. Not safety
They now have a representative from Fleet on any safety debriefs, talk about the fox guarding the hen house. It is all about apportioning blame. Not safety
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There is not a real non jeopardy safety reporting system. They claim there is, but if you mess up you really stick your neck out. It's not a very pro active system but rather very re active. The concept of an open door policy is simply laughable. The ME is a blame culture, why did you do this, what went wrong?? etc. not what can we do to prevent this again, what can we as a company do to help....Fatigue and over loaded rosters are a big problem currently, and the overall response is that, well it's legal 
I tend to agree more with Marooned.
I tend to agree more with Marooned.
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Varig,
No you are not gonna be fired for taking pictures of crew in the flight deck!
You will be fired for allowing the crew to sit in the F/O's seat with her hands on the controls at 35,000 feet, and she then subsequently pops said photo on Bookface with all the flight details!
Or perhaps the reference was to the F/O that was fired for taking photo's of the crew inside the engine on the ramp at CMB (a joint civil/military airport in a troubled country), in front of 300 pax who had been delayed for 3 hours due to the aircraft being tech, missed their connections, and were p1ssed off so (with much wobbling of moustached heads) complained to the company!
Its all about being sensible and above all not being stupid and leaving yourself open to being hauled over the coals in the office!
"But there for the grace of god go I" and all that crap etc etc. I hope I never find myself in any of the situations mentioned above which in all essence seems completely innocent. But before I do anything which may be (even slightly) outside my job remit, I have a little think about the 'possible' consequences first............... Risk management chaps! I suggest you all do the same.
No you are not gonna be fired for taking pictures of crew in the flight deck!
You will be fired for allowing the crew to sit in the F/O's seat with her hands on the controls at 35,000 feet, and she then subsequently pops said photo on Bookface with all the flight details!
Or perhaps the reference was to the F/O that was fired for taking photo's of the crew inside the engine on the ramp at CMB (a joint civil/military airport in a troubled country), in front of 300 pax who had been delayed for 3 hours due to the aircraft being tech, missed their connections, and were p1ssed off so (with much wobbling of moustached heads) complained to the company!
Its all about being sensible and above all not being stupid and leaving yourself open to being hauled over the coals in the office!
"But there for the grace of god go I" and all that crap etc etc. I hope I never find myself in any of the situations mentioned above which in all essence seems completely innocent. But before I do anything which may be (even slightly) outside my job remit, I have a little think about the 'possible' consequences first............... Risk management chaps! I suggest you all do the same.
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It is for distrusting, abusive, paraniod people like you sheiky.
For the rest of us, I agree with Oblaaspop and Contacted. As I've already said on a previous post, behaviour breeds behaviour. Go to work, do you job and make it professional and enjoyable. 7 years + here and no issues.
For the rest of us, I agree with Oblaaspop and Contacted. As I've already said on a previous post, behaviour breeds behaviour. Go to work, do you job and make it professional and enjoyable. 7 years + here and no issues.
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I agree with Contacted cos he gives a balanced view. The problem is with the ****s in the office trying to show how big their hard** is with the hope of impressing senior management and becoming the next President of the airline. dream on boys.
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It's very simple really. If there can be or is ANY negative publicity or the possibility of such.....you're screwed. MAN...all the plane spotters there posting what happened, plus TC in the area. Keep it in house and out of the eyes of the public and your "punishment" will be kept in house. Oh yes, there will be some punishment, eg, downgraded, command delayed, taken off the line until you prove you did all correctly and are "innocent", etc. The ASR system screws you too. If you don't file an ASR when you should have and your incident is found out, screwed. If you file an ASR and self report, maybe screwed. There are individuals that are trying to fight this mindset, but remember where the airline is based. The IAH high speed abort has been, in my mind, a pleasant surprise. Maybe, just maybe a small change in the mindset. Just say, there were those that wanted to hang those guys.....enough said. On the other hand, a massive shortage of pilots overides everything.
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The process is as follows,
- Blame Storming by Fleet using ELOM and Flight Safety envidence
- Blame Shifting to least wasta individual (pilot)
- Blame Apportioning
- Punishment, warning letter, loss of profit share, delayed command or demotion
- Start looking for another airline to work for
Join Date: Jan 1999
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Safety Culture in EK
It's not just the airline that's rapidly approaching V1 on the pending accident scale - our dearly beloved regulator (the GCAA) is shamefully turning a blind eye to certain issues, fatigue being just one of them.
Case in point - EK count 'stick time' only for augmenting crews in relation to our annual and 28 day flying limits. eg: DXB - IAH block time 16:30, only 8 hours or less will actually be recorded for the augmenting crew.
This leads to an actual annual total for some EK pilots of well in excess of 900 hours block time, as the GCAA knows only too well. They will also tell you that they are not in agreement with EK's methods of this hour limit calculation but are unwilling and unable to currently do anything about it. Talk about caving in to political and commercial pressure.
Tale - dog - wagging..................?
Case in point - EK count 'stick time' only for augmenting crews in relation to our annual and 28 day flying limits. eg: DXB - IAH block time 16:30, only 8 hours or less will actually be recorded for the augmenting crew.
This leads to an actual annual total for some EK pilots of well in excess of 900 hours block time, as the GCAA knows only too well. They will also tell you that they are not in agreement with EK's methods of this hour limit calculation but are unwilling and unable to currently do anything about it. Talk about caving in to political and commercial pressure.
Tale - dog - wagging..................?
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How interesting to read all this. I'm not a pilot, but a frequent EK flyer.
Let me tell you how much I do not enjoy reading how some pilots on here are basically guaranteeing an accident happening soon. I understand the airline having problems, and how things are done differently in the ME...but to say that the airline is bracing for a hull loss soon, doesn't give me much confidence in the boys flying the thing up front. Sad.
Let me tell you how much I do not enjoy reading how some pilots on here are basically guaranteeing an accident happening soon. I understand the airline having problems, and how things are done differently in the ME...but to say that the airline is bracing for a hull loss soon, doesn't give me much confidence in the boys flying the thing up front. Sad.