Foreign pilots warn about Turkish Airline in Danish news paper Politikken
 

13 current and past foreign pilots of Turkish Airline speaks out about the very low profiessional level of turkish pilots in the airline.

Google Oversæt

One quote from a captain:

"It is a dangerous company. I have never in my time as a pilot sitting next to a mate who was incompetent and just let the stick because there was nothing he could not handle. But I have now, "says one pilot.

The paper has also had access to british ATC reports stateing that Turkish Airline was the one with most level busts in UK Airspace

There are two articles and Google gives a good enough translation to english. The other one is here (the headline reads: Pilot of Turkish Airlines, "I never thought I would be afraid to fly" ):

Google Oversæt

Another quote:

"One of the foreign pilots tell of a conversation he had with a Turkish-pilot on a flight. The first officer told that he wanted a job in an airline outside Turkey.

I replied that he first had to improve his English skills. He said that he had indeed passed the internal English test from the Turkish aviation authorities. Next day we had to fly out of a major European airport. It was snowing heavily and there were many delays. In such situations, the air traffic control is busy. There are spoken quickly over the radio and they say many things outside the standard. The co-pilot knew nothing of what was said, so I had to take over radio communication. "


The airline rejects it all and no national or international authorities have noticed any problems (apart from the Amsterdam crash)

That was one of the big issues during the investigation of the Amsterdam crash - the Turks just would not accept that one of their pilots could have been at fault !

And this is NOT a problem ????

as,
I would say that is a HUGE problem.

THYred
 

lovely people, great city.... would rather walk than fly with them, and I have seen spectacularly bad operations... Think this is not the last we will hear about them, unless they truly change their spots.

There are some guys in the company that are aware that a change is needed, but there is a stack of deadwood there, and more on the way. Great food. There are also a lot of ferringhi's there that are trying to make a difference.

My favorite story (first hand) is a friend who was doing OE and was denied the use of checklists by the IP.... "we don't do that here.... " coming about 18 months after pancaking a new twin in the mud, it seems a bit, er, courageous...

'nuff for now, but don't be surprised to get more in the near future, there is activity under the water.

The Aya Sofya is spectacular, and the Bosphorus is a fun day out. The quakes are entertaining, a big one there is going to result in BBQ's all around the edge of the Sea of Marmara, of biblical proportions. Really good food. Nice people. Hope they start flying aircraft instead of whatever they are trying to do now. Lots of pretty cabin crew...

It's time someone speaks up.....

Let’s not forget about the THY A-340 crew that could not negotiate a high speed turn off at Mumbai in this past summer. Runway 27 was closed for a couple of days.

They are not the only one with huge safety problems that are endemic to the company. At least it isn't illegal for them to speak out as it is in some places. Notice too, no one has been instantly flamed on here by the rah-rah boys for saying all this, la.

Around 3 years ago I presented myself for a screening with Turkish.

The interview was novel, myself & another candidate (only two of us showed up that day) were sat around a big table, drinking tea, with around half a dozen fleet managers/chief pilot/ops director or whomever was in town that day & fancied a cup of chai.
Very convivial, but what struck us was that of all the management wallas present, only 1 spoke English confidently enough to ask any questions, all the others passed through him. This lack of English skills among the senior pilot mangement is undoubtedly reflected in English Level4 being a tick in a box rather than a REAL requirement.
The sim "test", was notable for the total lack of any need to display CRM/use checklists/ follow procedures. Just get in, take off, have an engine failure, turn downwind & shut down the engine yourself downwind on a visual circuit, never mind that engine flmeout is not a Recall item ( the other guy is only there so you have someone to talk to when you are feeling bored :rolleyes: ) checklists? Nah real pilots don't need them.
The whole thing was quite a ride & was conducted by 3 of them, jibbering away excitedly behind us in the instructors station. I was told by previous candidates that post-Hudson (but pre AMS ) the favourite laugh was double eng failure, land in the bosphorus, they had dropped that when I attended post AMS, strangely they didn't give me stall recovery in the approach configuration nor auto-throttle failure :hmm:
I was genuinely quite shocked that this little "intro" might be in fact a heads-up as to how they operated, & wasn't quite sure by the end of it if I really wanted to find out. I wasn't offered the job anyhow, having made the fatal error of asking if the 737 roster would accomodate commuting (it wouldn't , & it seems you weren't meant to ask ) but I did end up working for another Turkish company subsequently.

Some of the stuff I saw there both in the Sim, & whilst line training,in particular the First Officers total unwillingness to point out anything that might offend you/ call into question your performance as a Capt, went a long way to aiding my understanding of the AMS accident.
Big, big cultural problems for aviation in that country,speaking up against your "seniors" just doesn't happen in general life & most of the older generation pilots are ex military & very "old school", resulting in a cockpit gradient that is much too steep to permit speaking up in many cases, regardless of the age/experience in the RHS. The full report of the AMS accident suggested the PIC was not of this mentality at all, & was respected & liked for his fair attitude, but. . . no matter how fair he was, how able did the other two guys feel to intervene / go over his perceived position/authority.
The attitude between pilot managers/office staff, and between Turkish pilots /cabin crew seemed strangely "sixties", to an outsider. If you need further evidence of this paternal/hierarchy attitude that pervades their society, look at the social problems relating to Turkish women, their choice of partners, & the family "reaction".

Would be difficult to argue that ingrained safety problems do not exist in Turkish, the only frightening thing being that many of the same observations could be levelled at countless other carriers (as many of us have seen first hand )
Doubt if any credence will be given to this by anyone who could make a difference, as the Turkish CAA / Turkish Airlines guys will all have flown in the same squadron & will perpetrate the status quo.

Superpilot,
Exactly what I found in another Turkish carrier, so would doubt any of them are significantly different.

Sounds like nothing has changed since the days of the DC10 accident.
Seem to recall in the lead up to that, some horrendous stories during their training.
163 pilots and 159 of them Captains-???
MD trainers aghast at the arguments that would break out on the flight deck with the result that one or more of them would leave the cockpit!!!

A friend who worked there told me they have official 'grades' of Captains? An 'A' list and a 'B' list, with certain restrictions on the B listers.
Any truth in that?

Well, it doesn't surprise me.

Just read the CVR transcript of the Amsterdam accident.
The Senior Instructor / captain of that flight was spoken to only with the Turkish word "Hocam".
Apparently it means "master/commander" or similar....
Resulting in a horrendously steep cockpit gradient. Unfortunately this was not adressed in the final report.
Steep cockpit gradients cause unsafe flying environments.

In much the same way as Americans at Boeing never admit to having any design faults in their aircraft. However, I think Captplaystation has nailed with:

Like UK ones - I can remember being balled out by an arrogant, selfish, over-confident, know-it-all, impatient, ex RAF dwarf because HE overshot the stopping point as HE taxied in (longish story). But I'm afraid he was typical of the fast jet dross we had to put up with. Obviously, there were many good guys and fortunately some are still with us.

:Catsplay

Spot on. :uhoh:

The B737 HoT would shut down engines without command as PNF, without using a checklist, without confirmation, without... in fact any common practice being employed (except, this appears to be the common practice at the particular airline...). i saw this first hand, and probably didn't endear myself by asking "WTF are you doing? ", while trying politely to break his wrist. :mad:

A candidate was given an single engine flame out, and the support training captain shuts down without command the other engine. The aircraft glides into the Bosphorus, and the candidate fails...

AS CPS has noted, this is not limited to the "Sons of Anarchy"... but it is prevalent and the recent history bodes ill, particularly following their AMS bingle where apparently no one is interested in the learning points. (it took the "Dukes of Hazzard" 25 crashes to become anally compliant and far better at covering up their more recent 3 write-offs as maintenance retirements...). (In a past life in a culture that is rather "straight laced..." an FO tried to shut down the wrong engine without command ina sim session, and I picked his hand off the fuel control switch by the overly large fascia of his "Pilots Watch". Apparently this constitutes a touch in their society. I stopped the sim session and we went outside for a chat. His complaint was I "touched" him, and my response was that in an aircraft if he did the same I would probably "touch" him with a fire axe, and remove his offending wayward uncontrolled appendage from the equation. FWIW, anywhere, anytime, I reserve the right as the responsible party to remove acts of sabotage from the program, and I can give less than a toss for the personal insult that may be implied by the recipients of tough love. :}

PS, quickest way out of THY apparently was to make a PA and call Istanbul by its old name... :ok: For a group happy to be peeved at the characterisation of the treatment of the Armenians (not to mention the more recent dealings with the Kurds) as something less than friendly (genocide)... there appears to be an underlying unresolved issue or two on identity.:ugh:

Great food, nice people.... lovely city. :)

Seriously piltdown man. Why try to defend a useless and dangerous airline and culture with a PC-:mad: 'oh it happens from time to time in the UK' story????

The Turks are a mad bunch at the best of times. They fly like crap. The THY sims smelt of p1ss. They crash aeroplanes quite often.

Get over it.......

I'd rather get on any UK carrier than a Turk one. END OF STORY:ugh:

I am not a pilot or anyhow aviation related guy. I am a doctor, who is very much interested in aviation. I am truly sorry for interrupting a discussion between airline professionals, but, how acceptable is it, to call a whole culture and people living in that culture, mad, useless and dangerous? What does it tell about you and your culture?

As a person (a Turk :E), who is flying with Turkish quite often, I hope, people will investigate this thoroughly and seriously and come up with solutions. But guys, just please try to be nice and civil for people, who you are commenting on.

i do not know any actual guy who is flying for turkish so i will not comment explicitly for them but in general many carriers seem to have the unpublished policy that applying for a rightseat job you do not need to know much and will learn it with the years -so its crucial to accept bad pay, bad rostering etc. instead of demonstrating high level skills to get the job.

TK
 

I have been there for the interview as well and can confirm most of what capt.playstation reported on here. Although there seem to be quite a difference between the Boeing and Airbus fleet. My screening was on the A320
and made sense, no tricks no traps, very professional.

I did not sign the offered 1 year contract because I got my hands on a monthly roster before I went and have to say that these guys work fairly hard. Commuting was and probably is not possible.

Now, one has to see the big picture in Turkey and keep in mind that you can not (!) change mentalities. I would also never ever put my family on an Onur flight (past experiences) and during my time in Turkey I learned the following:

The system is sick. This is why I left. The CAA used to be corrupt, until a few years ago there was only one pilot source (air force). English levels are very very poor and it'll take another decade to improve. They're working on it and much has been changed already BUT most of the CPs and DOs are still from the forces and hire their buddies, wingman or whatever they call them.
TRE/TRIs have grandfather rights and train the next generation the old fashioned way simply because the don't know better.
I've seen guys switching seats after only one season after 22 years of saluting everything that moves in the air force.:ugh:

I will not list operational things here, although I could probably write a book about it:yuk:

I don't agree with White Knights (strong words!). I have been in the sim recently in IST (IFTC) and have to say that it's a state of the art sim.center. But again I agree with capt.playstation's comments on the AMS accident that if 3 pilots did not notice a 40kt speed drop on approach, why having pilots in a cockpit than?

To our Danish collegues I like to say that I think it's a good thing that you made your concerns public BUT you did this after your contracts have not been extended (all forgein pilots will have to go as I hear). They will say ' we did not extend the contract - now they're angry and talk about us.'
Shouldn't you have raised your voice (or leave) earlier if you think it is not safe? Conveniently collecting the pay and than 'make up things' after the end does not put you in a good light either.
I've been in trouble for speaking up in the past but know today it was right.

I hope that this will cause a wave of discussions in Turkey although it will be embarrassing for some.

Many will read this forum but will not contribute for known reasons.

Turkish people are to proud to ask for help, they're still living in a 'no blame culture' and (I repeat myself) it is changing but at a very very slow pace.

Turkey is much like Greece, Italy, Spain or France used to be.

Well, I am telling it straight.. Turkey is no where near as bad as Greece for these macho men things..Yes is true that many pilots are ex Services, but they have to do 5 yrs in Civil avaition, good flying skills, not just daddy know some fat bloke in airline.like in Greece. Ok CRM with " older " Captains we are told is big problem, but younger ones, no so much big deal..problem is it will be many many years before the old guard retires in both pilots and management..but regarding ATC talking, they do make efforts to speak in " common language" English.. In Greece it is not ths case..

If you look at the totally inexcusable & dangerous bullsh1t that is "Ercan" control (Ha Ha! ) you don't find much excuse for either of the 2 nations you are discussing here.
Europe. . . HA !

I've been reading this discussion, which majorly consists of opinions and anecdotes directly from professionals, during my coffee break to my study for ATPL exams tomorrow. Disregarding some heavy and unfair expressions, I prefer to view and consider everything posted here in an objective way. However, as you can guess, it's still quite sad for me to read such negative opinions about Turkish Airlines, both as a Turkish citizen and a Turkish Airlines cadet.

I won't try to defend the company blindfoldedly (because I'm yet to begin my job), nor I'll support the lack of any constructive criticism which would be beneficial not only for the company but also the international commercial aviation (considering TA's widespread routes around the globe). With all my respect to the professionalism and experience speaking here, however; I'd like to remind everybody commenting here about the whole new generation of pilots on the way to Turkish Airlines and to the world's aviation.

I don't currently know much about my senior colleauges, but what I see here around me in my training is lots of hardworking brilliant, open minded pilot candidates. We are all "at-least" university graduates, who have succesfully passed a vigorious series of aptitude, language and psychological (not to mention health-related) tests which took almost an entire year. Half of us under full-time training in USA while the other half is being trained full-time in the company's brand-new training facilities in our country. Most of all, our progress is thoroughly monitored in both facilities and frankly speaking, I haven't seen any tolerance for failure or ineffectiveness in any of the training phases. These people (including me) are thoroughly and fairly selected, I can assure you on this as a prospective Turkish Airlines pilot who will be the first in his family to be in aviation.

As a second thought, reading all these stuff actually motivated me to study more. Wow! Thank you! :)

I'll be looking forward to share the sky and meet you to learn more from your experiences. Safe flight to everybody!

I would suggest..
 

:DI m fine with all critics..by all means, except those related with politics, :sad:it's not the topic here. And I would suggest the one who saw these irregularities and faults should report it to the company flight manager. Has anyone done this? I think no:eek: Then you can not be called as international professional pilot. Aviator corrects the other aviator without patriotic expectations.. It's a shame on all having one aspect critisism like a child.
Passenger is passenger...do you know how many from Germany how many from China you carry on board? Normally no! So if you are in the cockpit you cant see the faults from national perspective... if you do it you are in a big mistake..
Please report these irregulaties to the authority to take precaution or help to kick them out of the company .. so you can create a better job environment by yourself..:)
Thank you for all... have a safe one always..

FACTS:
 

Here are some facts for anyone wishing to work in Turkey and/or Turkish Airlines:
-You are a second (sometimes third) class citizen if you are a foreign pilot
-It is never Captains fault! It is the FO, plane, ATC or procedures that are at fault
-Being a pilot at Turkish Airline is tradition that is passed on from father to son. Anybody else is an outsider
-Most THY pilots are ex military. They still fly with that menthality and any pilot from a civilian background is considered to be a moron
-There is no teaching/gathering experience in the cockpit. There is just yelling and making you feel stupid
-You cant report your senior to the management. Nobody will side with a foreigner/outsider. Almost all captains have a God complexion.
-English conversations are non existent. The English exam is being done by the Turkish CAA which in itself lacks the knowledge of English. I've seen them fail Australians or British citizens, just because!
-The Turkish CAA is one of the most corrupt organization in the country. They can pass or revoke your license ot their own free will, making anything look like a fault. Nobody dares to speak against them. There is no other official organization that controls them cause they are one of the biggest source of income to the current AKP government.
-So many charges of corruption was brought againts the former head of CAA but as one can guess, he never had his day in the court.
-The Turkish CAA doesnt employ own staff based on compedance. They employ their staff based on who they know (called 'Torpil').

Examples are too many to list. My advice to anyone considering this country: DONT!

13 gossip girls
 

do you really believe that Turkish cpt. said "no need to do preflight-before start-start-before taxi-before take off checklist" and soon later "shut up rookie, i can fly this thing with my d..k"..!! do you guys really really believe ? if you're a real airline pilot you must know that every item on this checklist is very very very important..so stop making rumors about Turkish pilots..i'm one of the Turkish pilot and i'm proud with our FTO education..and we don't have any training session like "how to control aircraft with d..k"..the 13 foreign pilot that has spoken to danish press must be jealous about Turkish pilots..it's because of Turkish pilots are more talented and if we lose our hands, yes we can control this airplanes with our d..k !! this is just a gossip that 13 girl has spoken that's all..have a safe flight !!

cgtydzn
 

I can understand you being a touch defensive in respect of your country,people, and Pilots - particularly as some comments on this thread have been a bit unpleasant in my opinion.

However your statement [quoteit's because of Turkish pilots are more talented ][/quote] is perhaps overstating your case ?

Sweeping generalisations of countries and/or cultures are I find mostly inappropriate.

To be honest I do believe it because I've witnessed the 'talented' Turkish Hocams at first hand because I was sitting next to them for about 2 years. Now 10 years later I can laugh with it and am glad that I survived most of it. There is a big difference between the old generation fighter pilots (:mad:) and the old generation pilots who have flown multi crew aircraft in the Turkish airforce, they are the real hocams. Let's say that in my experience about 30pct of the people I've flown with where real good blokes and very normal and enjoyable to fly with. The other 70pct however ....
The problem with Turks however is that if you criticise them that they immediately think that you criticise their whole nation while they criticise basically everything which is not located in Turkish teritory. I'm quite sure that the new generation is different because they have never been in the airforce and don't bring the 'attitude' with them so give them another decade (hopefully with no more accidents) and everything will be sorted out by itself. Let me however end on a positive note. I still love to go to Turkey on holiday because believe it or not I still have good friends in the airline industry over there but most of them have flown multi crew aircraft in the Air Force.

re: exeng
 

i think you must read more carefully "13 foreign pilot that has spoken to danish press must be jealous about Turkish pilots. It's because they are more talented" i meant they are more talented than 13 gossip girl

regards

yep ... some things never change... dear friend there are more than the "original 13" gossip girls on this forum, and they have been there for quite some time. Evaluate the merit of their posts over several years at your leisure, however they (we) are from a culture where crm rules the roost rather than little gods with stripes on.

We had a representative of the nation in question flying with us recently; thankfully a brief visit ... (friend of a friend ... usual thing)

His net contribution to the operation was to p1ss off everybody by ignoring SOP and inventing his own, demonstrating a total disregard for CRM, especially with the junior f/o's and engineers, insisting loudly that everyone should walk in line behind him at all times according to rank, like a little line of geese, except most of the cabin crew were somewhat taller than our be-striped Napoleon :rolleyes:

Naturally, he DEMANDED to to addressed as Captain at all times .... it wasn't pretty..... oh and he was from the AF and had never flown one of those prop driven planes ... so that's all right then :yuk:

Isn't that exactly one of the problems that is being addressed by the expat captains?
In a good working and just safety culture it is important to have a tolerance for failures because every human being makes (a lot of) (minor) mistakes. The idea behind 'tolerating' these failures is because nobody makes them on purpose and the goal is to learn from them so you and other pilots will not make the same mistake again. If there is no tolerance for mistakes and you get shouted at every time you mess something up, you probably will become either too scared to act on your own without first asking/confirming everything with the captain. Or you will just do the same things, make mistakes (as all human beings, even the hocams), but you will have a lot of hesitation to report your mistakes or ask for verification, which makes the whole safety situation worse.

In the Turkish company I flew for, the purpose of checklists seemed to have slipped by most of the FO's, which leads me to believe the real problem was the (local) Capt's , or the training.
During the reading of a challenge/response checklist, if one hesitated more than half a second, or paused to perhaps hear a radio call for us/or some other distraction, most of them would just keep reading down the list without waiting the response.
How many times I :ugh: whilst trying to explain, you challenge I respond, if I don't, or I respond wrongly , you must either wait, or challenge me again.
This should not be required with supposedly qualified crew.
I once cocked up an approach at night into a desert runway, the one sat next to me ("supposed" to be pilot MONITORING ) clearly saw it all going for a crock of sh1t, yet said nothing. At the subsequent debrief, he could offer no explanation for saying nothing, & I truly was not a difficult person to remonstrate with.
In the space of a couple of weeks I had to take over 4 times on landing, on long runways in good conditions, & a previous life as a flying instructor ensures I am not one constantly covering the controls just waiting to grab them as soon as any deviation is identified. I have never flown with such a passive bunch, terrified of their own shadows, in most cases unable/unwilling to demonstrate any initiative, I am sure due to being browbeaten any time they opened their mouths in the past.
All in all, with the exception of a few very pleasant & exceptional guys, the majority were totally at odds with modern CRM thinking, and we all know who sets the mood /standard of operation/communication in the cockpit.
What I saw in the Sim during my Turkish Airlines assessment, & during my OCC for the other company, was like a throwback to a different era.
The only thing that will change this is the gradual retirement/replacement of the current LHS occupants with a new generation, but this takes decades.
Not trying to be offensive to our Turkish contributors, but I have to tell it as it is. Denial & blaming Boeing did no favours to how the outside world viewed your response to the AMS accident, a true professional knows just what a small part of that causal chain can be put down to a simple A/T failure.
Sometimes there is no nice way of putting it, but the general standards I viewed were not up to scratch for a company/country that sometimes claims to be European.

Thanks...
 

Thank you very much for your words about Danish collegues, captain MAXBLOW...All the best...

13 gossip girls
 

Yes, if we would know their names, maybe we can share some funny stories about them esp. from their LIFUS phases...But I do not believe that they show up...

Unsafe THY
 

Check out air disaster.com/statistics and you will see that Turkish Airlines fatal accident rate is over 6 TIMES GREATER than any other state carrier in Europe. They are almost as unsafe as Egyptair, which is going some.

You're right; yet I didn't mean that we're trained by being yelled at or threatened (personally I can't tell without looking at my logbook how many attempts for landing it took for me before learning to touchdown smoothly :\). I must have misstated my point. Let me put it this way:

I'm currently getting my training in a foreign country (probably the most reputable one in aviation) among my compatriots/colleauges and obviously all of our flight instructors are natives to this country (not to mension every single speech has to be in English). Even though these civilian-oriented instructors too sometimes go a little bit tough in the air; there's communicative environment in our training cockpits most of the time. What I've tried to emphasize by this tolerance issue is that we are monitored and evaluated according to the internationally accepted standards of civil aviation training. As it is well known, these training standards (be it FAA or JAA) have their tolerance margins and we are subject to those, just like our future colleauges from other nations' airlines, getting trained here. Obviously no one's been kicked out of here after failing a single checkride.

On the other hand, one thing which is very hardly tolerated here during training is behavioural or attitude-related (not the flight, ofcourse :) ) problems. Students and flight instructors are encouraged to speak up and discuss their problems quite freely; but when it comes to disrespectful behaviour (which is not the single-sided "hocam" thing you've mensioned) proper disciplinary actions of varying degree are applied for both the students and the instructors, just like in every other flight school. Plus, if she/he has acceptable reasons, a flight student (as well as an instructor) may even ask for the change of her/his flight instructor. The bottomline is that, everybody here has to be communicative yet respectful to each other and, in my humble opinion, this is the essence of the CRM. And believe me, our guys being trained in Turkey are treated in the same professional principles with us.

As a person who's always trying to be open-minded, I'm not trying to claim Turks' superhuman talents in flying. The talent is everywhere in the world. However, against all those single-sided criticism; I wish to remind everybody that hundreds of well-trained, professional Turkish pilots are at the gates of the industry. Again I, as one of those, am always open to criticism; wishing to learn something from them.

Ps: Aside from ATC and air traffic experience in foreign airspace; our language tests are held by well-known independent international institutions, just like many other major airlines do.

CIGZDOZENNNZ

Really.

1. Been there, witnessed first hand. Left. BTW the management barely understood the issue that is exposed by this behaviour, as you apparently don't either.

2. The reason that checklists are used is that humans have severe limitations on accuracy of memory in dealing with multitask situations. If you consider that all checklists should be able to be memorised and used from memory, I think you should fit right in into the B737 fleet at least at THY. Good Luck, we will just be watching from the sidelines or awaiting highlights in the funny pages.

This is not a bash a nationality issue, it is a problem that a particular system has evolving from it's problematic past, and which is fighting rather well to maintain a status quo ante. I am being very guarded about what I say re the program, what is occurring under the slight ripples on the surface are truly shocking, and I merely rely on my own observations as an air safety investigator in that respect.

The simulators were actually rather good in condition, other than the oldest of the B737 fleets which are barely fit as procedural trainers. The B777 is state of the art, and the guys running that program are good value. I have very good Turkish friends and they would love to see their system change, however they are aware that is it is in many areas of the world, change can be painful, and strong are the forces that oppose change. It was always a hope that A and also SG would achieve a change in attitude, that has not been observed.

As has been said before, there are good people in the program, it is the program that has issues changing the entrenched, self perpetuating non compliance that is so rampant on cursory examination of the program.

great food, and good people. (Istanbul is one of my favorite cities).

Soumneal

You are the future here. The younger guys who have come through the same or similar system as you are a pleasure to work with. I've worked with many of you.

The problem here and in many other airlines is the old military guys. They are a virus which will pass in time.

I see a brighter path for you as you progress through the system. Keep the smile on. You'll be fine.

Hello everyone,
I am an TURKISH AIRLINES CAPTAIN and flying on B737 fleet for many years.
I will not participate the discussion and the accusations about THY on here because it is not my job and i might not be seen objective.
I am following the threads respectfully even the most offensive ones about the company and the people of Turkey.However i must say that criticising a company should be something different then assaulting the people living and working decently in a country and in the company as well.
And the issue about the cyprus is a political matter and i don't think we pilots have any business on politics.The Ercan Control is all about a recognition effort of a nation on international arena .and as a Turkish Pilot no matter it increases my workload i always obey the instructions given by Ercan and let Nicosia know.

Yet everyone else is told to politely decline any instructions given by Ercan. Nicosia is the only internationally (ICAO) recognised controlling authority for that airspace.

The confusion that is the Nicosia/Ercan will lead to a very serious incident/accident one day, and everyone knows it.

Anyone remember what happened when DHL met a Tu154 that thought he was doing the right thing, even though everyone else knew it wasn't the correct way.
Thank you to Turkish pilots for endangering the rest of us whilst transiting the airspace over Cyprus.

So, if Cyprus is a political matter that pilots have no business on, why do you, "as a Turkish pilot obey the instructions given by Ercan" if, as you stated they are motivated by " a recognition effort by a nation on International arena" despite knowing that all non-Turkish pilots who have read & understood their en-route guides , do not ?
So what is more important ? following the legal commands given to you by the only legally recognised authority for that airspace ? or following the illegal instructions of a "psuedo controlling authority" just because they happen to be Turkish ?

In this post you have merely reinforced the points that have been made throughout this thread.

What about KLM...???
 

What about KLM 737 departed from taxiway "D" (AMS) by the way??? Everybody was very silent on that matter...Wondering the reason...and you???? You think that CL complete...don't think so...