Yes in theory you may be the commander. But try pulling that stunt a few times and see how long you last in an 'expat' airline.

That's the problem.

Exactly Xulu, expat airlines are non-union, every time you use command authority you risk losing your job.

Emirates loves hiring pilots that view EK as their last stop. Good little soldiers/slaves. An ideal candidate in the interview pool is one who can't get a job in their home country whether that be to economic reasons or other.

Landflap, the only "real Commanders" you see at most expat airlines are the ones that have nothing to lose. ie. Enough money in the bank to retire, back up plans, or just a F!ck the System mentality.

I agree, there are no real commanders out here, most people just want to cover their arse, are **** scared of the company and do everything to please.
Company: jump!
Pilot : how high?

The overfly min altitude was assuming hand-held rocket launchers couldn't reach that height... now we're dealing with top grade medium range missiles launched off special vehicles (thanks to the Russians) so the issue here is why wasn't this big change in threat/capability red flagged worldwide... especially given the 3 aircraft taken down by such missiles in the preceding weeks?

The flight planning through such volatile zones is opening up the airlines to huge legal issues.
It's called "constructive knowledge" and "affordable safety", in that the flight planning departments SHOULD (professionally speaking) be well aware of such conflict zones and plan away from them. Many are not and are chasing the dollar savings in planning shorter routes and as such, are testing out how far they can afford to risk, before safety is compromised.

What's really bothering me is this rise in power of these blinkered bean counters, pressuring flight planning to go through such conflict zones, ash clouds (Chinese) etc.

LMC : Just to add a little further, some late mail: Route Eurocontrol approved.

I'm less worried about bazookas than I am about some of the products of the amazing training system these days.

Himalayas, anyone... some of the stuff in the ASRs these days beggars belief. Just imagine the ones they knock back?!?

Personally I don't care. But then, I don't have a healthy fear of death. I can see why it might bother others.

Emirates wil luchtvaartconferentie na ramp | nu.nl/economie | Het laatste nieuws het eerst op nu.nl

From google translate:

Emirates wants aviation conference after disaster
CEO Tim Clark of Emirates airline on Sunday called for an international conference of airlines. He did this in response to the shooting down of a unit of Malaysia Airlines over eastern Ukraine.
Emirates wants aviation conference after disaster

According to him, there should be given on how airlines should deal with international conflicts urgently.
'' The international aviation community should indicate that this is ridiculous and unacceptable and that we refuse to be drawn into regional conflicts where the airline has nothing to do with it,'' said Clark about the Boeing Malaysia Airlines which in all probability was shot.

'' Until three days ago, we could handle this. Now I think that new protocols are needed to deal with this.''
safe routes
The International Air Transport Association IATA according to Clark, together with the UN aviation organization ICAO take the lead and decide which routes are safe. Now decide the companies themselves, or they fly over an area where a war.

Thus, the Qantas Australian society for the crash Thursday already decided not to fly over eastern Ukraine, while other companies that took decision only after the accident.
Emirates is in the number of passengers the world's largest airline.



My personal interpretation of this is that our management realise we fly over areas, like northern Iraq, where exactly the same could happen. However if things go wrong they don't want to take the blame for sending planes over a particular area, but instead want to point the finger at ICAO and blame them for claiming it was safe. Thereby avoiding comments, like those made in the press recently, that MH wasn't avoiding the Ukraine, and therefore some element of blame could be appointed to them, as opposed to other airlines which have avoided the Ukraine for some months already.

Halas,

The Buk missile system has two variants. The older variant is good up to FL500 with a reliable radius of 30km. The newer version is good up to FL750 with a reliable radius of 30km.

No commercial airliner is safe from such threats.

As Chocks said, it's time flight planning departments realise this and plan accordingly. In my book, avoid any potential war zones that have such SAM capabilities.

But alas, it is easier said than done I'm sure.... Doh..!!!

PGA your right reading those comments made me sick. Who exactly forced any of those airlines to fly over Ukraine? Others had already stopped. But the greedy and lazys just kept going the same direction. They always have and always will.

I'm afraid there is always a pivotal event in world history where when discussed in hindsight we say "how did we not see this coming"


hindsight always 20/20

As long as most ME carriers adopt the reactive action as opposed to the proactive way, letters like the one from TC sound hollow, to remain politically correct.

I know of a captain exercising his authority and demanded a reroute to fly around a taifun just to be called in for tea and biscuits and being told by the CP that next time he does that, the latter will burry him alive in the desert.

By the way: Dispatch asked "Why? You fly over a taifun, don't you?"!!!!
This to illustrate the threat mitigation attitude or skill of the people in charge.

In regards to TC's letter, I guess we can expect to stop flying the freighter to Kano.......????!!

He didn't mention Basra either.

Cargo crashes
 

When a cargo plane crashes, it won't even make the news, maybe some small text on the ticker on the bottom of the screen.

Only time a freighter crash makes the news is if it kills people on the ground or is caught on tape and goes viral.

Urban legend has it that a few UPS pilots sitting in recurrent ground school first learned of the UPS 747 that crashed in Dubai, months after the fact. Apparently the guys were too old to check e-mail.

@ chocks away saidSo, Chocks, what you're really saying, is that the Airlines all employ thick, braindead, infantile cretins and it's the regulatory authorities' responsibility to sit them all down and say, "Now, Children, Nasty men are squabbling and fighting and so you must not let your toys fly anywhere near them. "


WTF? these people are in charge of directing multi-billion pound assets
It's gross incompetence,dereliction of duty and reckless endangerment to send any Civil Transport through a war-zone WITHOUT HAVING WARNED THE PASSENGERS OF THE RISKS Goes without saying a full refund to any pax refusing the flight.

These people should be dragged into Court and punished.....Pour encourager les autres.

RE- calling in sick.....that's a lame wimp-out. If there was some Pilot solidarity and allPilots refused to take a dangerous route, management would stop planning them....also. they'd want to cover their own arssss re- duty of care to Pax.

Malaysian was unlucky , tough cheese, they deserve to be bankrupted by the compensation claims.

that's a load of tosh.. at any given time half the bloody world is in dispute with the other half, who's to decide what's safe and what isn't. you would have some routes that would need refuelling stops because you've triple the distance flying around 4/5 hot spots, and some routes that would be impossible due you no friendly countries to overfly!!

you get in a nasty war of words with Russia and how the hel l you get from Europe to Asia?? no Siberia, no "stans" no Ukraine, might as well write of the eastern med, no bloody Africa. I guess we could always fly west via the US and triple the time....

Highflyer, gross exaggeration there. And in any case you're using the same flawed logic that has got most airlines into this position - 'lets do this flight, through this airspace, to this place and make our risk assessment say its ok'


No, nothing was being handled, its just that the luck had not run out yet..

The people who should lead this debate should be the FAA and the airlines who's safety departments re-routed their aircraft away from Ukraine - after all, their judgement was better than the rest of the industry, clearly

Why are EK/EY/QR still flying over Iraq, prohibited by the FAA?

Map: The FAA Tells Airlines to Avoid Flying Over These Countries | New Republic

umm because they aren't American? why would you think non US carriers would be listening to the FAA in regards to international routes outside of the US?

umm Tell that to the Malaysians. If they had followed the US initiative this tragedy would have been avoided. If the US carriers are in any doubt as to safety, then we should be just as anxious. Look the other way & suffer the consequences. I'm not happy with the non-accountability of Kurdish, Syrian & ISIS weapons that proliferate in this area. If in any doubt as to the capability of their weapons, then surely common sense says best to avoid. I travelled KLM a few nights ago, and we routed over Iran, adding 20 minutes to the journey to Dubai.