Let's stop risking our lives
 

Good day,

In light of the shooting down of Mh17 over the Eastern Ukraine, and the fact that emirates used to fly exactly the same route, and even operated flights into kiew, in spite of all the known threats:

LETS STOP RISKING OUR LIVES FOR SOME PAX AND COMANY AND LETS REFUSE TO FLY TO WARZONE DESTINATIONS

I will from now on refuse flights and call sick if I see any of these destinations on my roster:

Kiev (discontinued in EK)
Kabul
Peshawar (discontinued in Ek )
Karachi
Baghdad
Arbil

This equally applies to flydubai , ethihad, air Arabia pilots.

The airlines are taking calculated risks operating to these places, they can but without me from now on!!!!!!!

g109

Stand for your idea and tell your company and your fellow pilots that you refuse to fly to those destinations but don't call sick as this will force somebody who is on standby to fly instead of you and for me this is not fair to say the least.
That's what is happening in my company with some pilots , they call sick and then somebody else has to stand up or fly there , this is lowness...

Dude. Life gets risky with birth and only gets worse every morning you get up...

you might as well add some more.

Cairo
tel aviv
Nairobi
too name just a few. if you stop flying everywhere there is strife you will have a lot of days off!!

Emirates had countless aircraft flying through that area.
Some of the media reports are slamming Malaysian for flying through the war zone. There was/is a restricted area up to FL320 and Malaysian was flying at FL330. Obviously not good enough.
Pilots have to ask why middle eastern airlines are dispatching their planes through these war zones. At the very very least it is bad PR and leaves a lot to be answered for.

If you want to avoid danger, don't take the car to work in the morning. It's the single most dangerous aspect of your day in the Middle East.

g109

As you appear to be on the 380 it doesn't look like you will have to make much of a personal stance!! But thanks for the thought!

They say the first few minutes of your life are in fact the most dangerous. Well I reckon the last few are pretty dodgy too. :uhoh:

LHR Rain

I thought we stopped flying over that area since March? All the European trips I did since then were well away from Ukraine airspace.

Harry

Harry

Flew over it twice recently, exact route - prompting surprise from both of us...good news on the way back is we flew over Iraq :0

f.

I flew over the exact area w Emirates 3 times in the last two weeks.
Look at the flight plans Harry.

It was only Semferapol (don't know how to spell that...) FIR that we were not flying over!

Flying to Northern Europe last week from DXB over Bagdad there was some sort of military drone flying large circles above us at about FL400-450. It's getting a bit tetchy going to or over these places. MH17 could have been any of us, it seems all the bad luck is with Malaysian right now. Sickening.

On the return from US (on an EK flight) a couple of weeks ago, I came back from my rest to notice our track was right over the eastern part of Ukraine. I stated that as far as I knew this was a war zone, to which my colleagues blasé response was "Nah, it's only Simferopol FIR where the trouble is".

It would seem that the "Gadfly" is the new AK47. Not good news for airline Pilots

Air India, Lufthansa, Singapore, to name a few - all been flying over that part of the Ukraine until yesterday.

..
 

We flew today back from DME.we had quite a diversion eastwards while others EK etc where still flying closer to this borders.
Were all in the same Boat and hopefully this is and was the last one in civil Aviation.nevertheless our crew notices said "Ukrainian Airspace closed till further notice"
Stay Safe Guys and Gal's

UP

But Qantas, Cathay, BA, Air Berlin, China Airlines, KAL, Asiana and all US airlines did not for the last few months...due security concerns.

Was it worth the risk to continue?

Ask the relatives of the 300 dead.

Not good enough EK.

f.

Flew over this exact route a few hours earlier than the Malaysian aircraft, makes you think!

As pointed out in another thread, what if an aircraft had a rapid depressurisation or to a lesser extent an engine out in that airspace. They most certainly would have gone below the 32,000 level.

Makes me think about our hundreds of weekly overflights of Iraq, let alone the flights that are still operating into there.

halas

Any real Commanders out there ? Rather than strike or go sick, or refuse a rostered duty, when a notam says that a particular bit of airspace should be avoided, don't you just ......................avoid............?

I posted on the MH thread my witnessing a really good Commander who faced this problem decades ago and requested a new flightplan avoiding a notam'd "avoid" area. This would then have made the mission impossible to complete in one sector. Result would have been three sectors, ( Base to Base)crew hours problems etc etc. Chief Pilot then tried to pressurise the Captain who maintained that everyone was avoiding the area and he would too. The latter was replaced by a more sycophantic "Captain" but my hero was red-flagged and resigned a few months later. He went on to enjoy decades of highly professional and worthy leadership to which, I , for one, aspire to.

I do feel that the industry has dumbed down (don't even get me started on Pay 2 fly ) but even the CRM pundits who insist on decision by committee and the final bullying by weak flight managers who suck up to the bean counters has led to the weakness in Commanders awareness of regulatory responsibility.

Captains : all the stuff is put on a plate to ASSIST you in making the appropriate Command decisions. some of it seductive, but, it is YOU who make the decisions because it is YOU who will be held, finally, responsible for the safe conduct of your flight. As they say in La belle France..........................................Jurst say NON !