[Thad E Ginathom]

I seem to recall... There was a certain amount of feeling that only pilots were allowed to form or express opinion on flying. Honestly, I don't recall what I might have said and hope it wasn't offensive. I think we all have a right to an opinion on anything, always allowing for the fact that we may not be professionals. So, on reflection, I see the point of your post, and let the cap fit where it hangs.

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by Thad E Ginathom

I seem to recall... There was a certain amount of feeling that only pilots were allowed to form or express opinion on flying.

Oh, I think we can be more specific. As I recall there was only one member, one pilot eluding to such nonsense. I hope he practices what he preaches and subsequently does not comment on anybody or anything in life outside his little confined world of the cockpit. He seems to have disappeared from TeamBHP at least.

I am a liberal at heart. So I will defend anybody's right to an opinion on any topic, irrespective of your particular knowledge, experience insights or anything else for that matter.

There is no law that stipulates you need to have knowledge or experience or anything to have an opinion. Most of us, if not all, will have opinions on just about anything under the sun, whereas our true knowledge and experience tends to be truly limited.

Some of us, will always no matter what the occasion spout our opinions too. My wife bought me a T-Shirt years ago that states: everybody is entitled to my opinion. I wear it with pride. Do not get me wrong, I do not claim my opinion is right. I know for a fact (!?) it is not, or at least not based on deep insights into a particular topic. To give a few examples, the Brits are totally bonkers with their Brexit and Trump is an idiot. Ok, hold it, bad examples, obviously these are facts and not opinion!

But seriously, you should not be surprised if your opinion is just that and devoid of any and all facts, you are going to get push back from anybody that (believes) they have marginal more knowledge on the topic at hand, with a few (perceived?) facts. Even if it is clear to the world you are THE expert or the least knowledgeable person in the universe you are going to get push back. Especially on social media. And rightly so. Everything, everybody and anything needs constant challenging. Especially so called experts or those in position of power and or authority. Especially some guy sitting up front in a metal tube that has my life in his/her hands. If he/she doesn't like being challenged by laymen, it is their problem not mine.

However, we are all humans, but still:
Just because somebody crashed into my car yesterday doesn't make me an expert in vehicle accidents. It does make me a person with one (1) first hand experience on how I experienced this particular accident. My experiences, feelings and emotions are very real to me. I thought my daughter and I were going to die. Never mind the facts.

Obviously, the guy that ran into me, is a complete idiot, how he got a drivers license we will never know. He is the worst driver ever and the accident is entirely his fault, driver error. Best to line him and his sorry family up to a wall and be done with them. Best to include the guy who passed him on his driving test in the line up as well.

Claiming to know the root cause of an aviation incident, just because you happened to be a passenger on that particular flight is understandable, but not necessarily very constructive or even close to what really (might) have happened.

Calling out pilot error on any aviation incident/accident before the facts are known (usually the publication of the official report) might be a gut reaction, but is devoid of any sense of realism (obviously just my opinion). Interestingly, statistically you have a very high chance of being correct. 😏To date, pilot error is still the main cause, and very often contributing factor in any aviation incidents and or accidents.

So if you ever find yourself in an aircraft incident or accident it is a sure bet it is pilot error. A better than 80% chance on average!

But calling it out, before the facts are known, is just not appropriate as far as I am concerned. Perhaps excusable/understandable if you were a passenger on the flight. But expect push back.

You should have published your post with the link to the report without further comments. I appreciate your earlier response to V. Narayan. But hey, maybe it is better never ever to respond to people you think are condescending?Why bother? Clearly you are still upset with him , but he has left the forum months ago. Just my 2 cents and I have been more often wrong then right.

I hope you and your loved ones can put this whole affair behind you.

Jeroen

[TKMCE]

A few responses from some pilots in this thread was taking arrogance to unbelievable levels in my opinion.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-...shire-25548016

A well known case.

Captain announced fire in "right engine". A number of passengers who saw fire or sparks in the left engine choose to say nothing although deeply concerned. Judging by the tone of some responses here may be they had a genuine concern the pilot would anyway disbelieve them .

End result....BMI @ Kegworth.

A very contrasting "fire" incident many years later

Upfront....no one disbelieved anything. After all "competence" is not in question here..


And ....???



https://m.hindustantimes.com/mumbai/...WTH6QEcEN.html

The relevant report is available in the regulator's public domain.


http://dgca.nic.in/accident/reports/...ts_acc_rep.htm

Refer VT-JGM Mumbai 27 August 2010


No one questions your self obvious assertion dear sirs that passenger A or Passenger B travelling in an an aircraft you are flying from X to Y does not have a pilot licence, but some of you can go a little easy on the ridiculing part!

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by TKMCE

.



Captain announced fire in "right engine". A number of passengers who saw fire or sparks in the left engine choose to say nothing although deeply concerned. Judging by the tone of some responses here may be they had a genuine concern the pilot would anyway disbelieve them .

!

To be honest, I believe there is a substantial difference between how a case is discussed on the forum and how a pilot might have to respond in a real emergency. Because on a forum it is just words. Nobody is going to die. All the more reason to explain and elaborate.

In a real emergency who do you trust. It is not entirely unusual for a jet engine to spew out some sparks.

So who are you going to trust? It can be a very difficult call. No so much about arrogance, but all about what is the most safe action and on what facts and observation do you base it. The wrong call and people could actually die!

Occasionally I would find myself with people in my little planes I might not know that well. E.g. friends of friends that came along. Prior to the flight I would always check with them. Have you flown before, have you flown in these little planes. Are you looking forward to it or are you a bit apprehensive etc.

Good to know their state of mind because it might give you some inclination of what they might do or whether they might be of some use in an emergency or whether you need to watch out for them.

I remember one gentleman that came along. The 80 year old dad of a neighbour. He only told me his dad had always had interest in aviation and always wanted to fly in a single engine advanced glass cockpit plane.

Prior to our flight I asked him if he had ever flown in these little single engine planes before. His reply: Son, I did, but it is at least 60 years ago and I can not even remember the type.

Then he added. I can barely remember when I entered my 20.000 hour into my log book. Turned out he was a retired AA captain. When 30 minutes into our flight the autopilot went on the blink I was very happy to hand over the controls to him, so I could trouble shoot. The old guy still had it. Kept that little plane rock steady, came normal to him.

Jeroen

[TKMCE]

Agreed Jeroen.

Back to topic. Are we learning anything from the accidents of the past in India?.

In 1990 at Bangalore HAL airport, an A320 crashed outside the airport boundary wall in broad daylight. The Fire and Rescue Vehicles reached the correct exit gate, only to find the exit gate locked and no one in the vehicles had the key .By the time they broke open the lock , precious time had elapsed and the aircraft was consumed by fire. 90 people lost their lives. As per the accident report 81 of the 90 people survived the impact but died due to the subsequent fire.

In 2010, an Air India Express Boeing 737 went down at Mangalore, again outside the airport perimeter. One of the recommendations of the Court of Inquiry was to procure "All Terrain" fire and rescue vehicles for all the airports.

Yet what happened in the 2016 Goa incident? It took 25 minutes for the first responders to reach the spot despite the aircraft being within the airport boundaries.


b] Handling affected passengers. Lots have been mentioned about how the affected passengers were handled at Goa.

A few years before that, the passengers of a Delhi bound Air India 320, which was diverted to Jaipur, landed blind in zero visibility (aircraft was a write off), were sent back to Delhi on a bus!

c] Disregard to procedures and poor training. The Air India A320 which was damaged at Jaipur was operated with a Computerized Flight Plan issued for a different aircraft. In addition to Jet Airways incident at Mumbai there was at least one other incident (Indigo) where crew opened exits during evacuation on the same side where "fires" were reported.

d] Debatable (in my opinion) command progression. Inexperienced first officer with an experienced captain was indeed the case with the Jet incident at Goa except for the small issue of most of the B737s commander's P1 experience being on Turboprop.
I am sure this is not just the case with Jet Airways alone. It will be interesting to see what percentage of flights operated in a day by India's airlines take off with both P1 and P2 having at least 2000 hours on type!


How many more "lucky escapes" can we survive before things go out of control?

[AirbusCapt]

Adding on to the above post.

Agreed about increasing safety, training standards and quality. Question is how? When the DGCA is staffed by clerks (IAS) from say agriculture, what sort of understanding of safety can be expected? So is the case in surveillance, audit, safety, standards, infact all the sections of DGCA. Airports are run by AAI, one more corrupt and lethargic government monolith. ATC is again underpaid and staffed by government agency. DGCA provides licences, both for airlines, operators and crew. They also revise/tweak duty and rest periods to suit greedy airlines interested in unbridled expansion. The next flight you fly may well be staffed by a overworked captain and a green FO who made it to his seat just because there is so much requirement, with absolutely minimal training provided and least standards maintained. But we Indians are more concerned with 1000 RS ticket prices, we wouldn't want to pay the prices for safe operations.

[honeybee]

Originally Posted by AirbusCapt

Adding on to the above post. Agreed about increasing safety, training standards and quality. Question is how? When the dgca is staffed by clerks (IAS) from say agriculture, what sort of understanding of safety can be expected? So is the case in surveillance, audit, safety, standards, infact all parts of dgca. Airports are run by AAI, one more corrupt and lethargic government monolith. Atc is again underpaid and staffed by government agency. Dgca provides licences, both for airlines, operators and crew. They also revise/tweak duty and rest periods to suit greedy airlines interested in unbridled expansion. The next flight you fly may well be staffed by a overworked captain and a green FO who made it to his seat just because there is so much requirement, with absolutely minimal training provided and least standards maintained. But we Indians are more concerned with 1000 RS ticket prices, we wouldn't want to pay the prices for safe operations.

Sorry to quote a long post, and apologies in advance for any possible offence one might take due to the tone of my post. It's not meant to be personal or against any specific members.

I have been wondering why the passengers should give a darn about the reasons mentioned above. He has paid for a safe and comfortable journey from point A to point B. Now it's not his problem if the DGCA is short staffed or if the pilot was high on something the last night or if the crew hasn't been paid salaries.

As a passenger I expect the people and the machine to perform as they are expected to.

To paraphrase something from the XUV Airbags threads, if the airbags have been provided the vehicle owner expected them to work in a crash to save the occupants' lives. If they didn't work, there's a problem, a huge one.

With the same yardstick, when I sit in a plane as a passenger, I don't expect the plane to veer off the runway. If it does, there's a huge problem. And as a passenger I don't particularly care which of the hundreds of subsystems or sensors or components were responsible for it.

Now as in the case of anything that's a combination of man and machine, the man is there to override the machine, to bring it under control, or to put it another way - never to let the machine control the situation - because that's why he is needed.

Just as in case where a news article states a car went out of control and I conclude the driver has failed as the man in control of the machine, in this particular instance the pilot has failed as the man in control of the machine. It's more worrisome that he didn't follow the SOP but even without knowing that I still hold the pilot primarily responsible for it.

[AirbusCapt]

Originally Posted by honeybee

Sorry to quote a long post, and apologies in advance for any possible offence one might take due to the tone of my post. It's not meant to be personal or against any specific members.

I have been wondering why the passengers should give a rat's arse about the reasons mentioned above. He has paid for a safe and comfortable journey from point A to point B. Now it's not his problem if the DGCA is short staffed or if the pilot was high on something the last night or if the crew hasn't been paid salaries.

As a passenger I expect the people and the machine to perform as they are expected to.

To paraphrase something from the XUV Airbags threads, if the airbags have been provided the vehicle owner wxpwcta them to work in a crash to save the occupants' lives. If they didn't work, there's a problem, a huge one.

With the same yardstick, when I sit in a plane as a passenger, I don't expect the plane to veer off the runway. If it does, there's a huge problem. And as a passenger I don't particularly care which of the hundreds of subsystems or sensors or components were responsible for it.

Now as in the case of anything that's a combination of man and machine, the man is there to override the machine, to bring it under control, or to put it another way - never to let the machine control the situation - because that's why he is needed.

Just as in case where a news article states a car went out of control and I conclude the dricer has failed as the man in control of the machine, in this particular instance the pilot has failed as the man in control of the machine. It's more worrisome that he didn't follow the SOP but even without knowing that, I still hold the pilot primarily responsible for it.

Excellent. Due respect to your thoughts sir, not giving a damn to how you elect your government, about social issues, minium required safety has bought about this condition. Keep on not giving a damn and the government, airlines, airplanes, pilots, xuv, Mahindra and the entire would will continue not giving a damn on how the passenger feels.
Since the attitude seems that everything is not my problem, I am sure India will continue as is.
I bought about a few ground realities about why conditions are as they are in civil aviation, but surely you seem to get not giving a damn to the reasons.

We are so fond of comparing with the west, but lack the social sense to do something to bring about a change.

[V.Narayan]

As passengers we have every right to demand safe and comfortable travel and the right to demand what went wrong [when it does]. As passengers let us also dwell for a moment on what risk are we talking about when we take a commercial flight.
‎
About 37 million + commercial flights take place each year world over; about 103,000 take-offs per day. The number of crashes a year is a 2-digit number for the last 10 years. In the 1990s it used to be 2 to 3 times higher on a much smaller base. The number of crashes with at least one fatality is around 1 in 2.5 million flights. 2017 was I believe a year of zero fatalities. Each one of us has to take his/her own call. I'll take mine with 1:2.5 million flights. The only safer mode of moving our bodies is taking an elevator. ‎
‎
Can things be improved - yes they can. Does the industry work together to improve the risk - yes it does, all the time. Can flying be made safer in India - it absolutely can; no doubt about it. Do some parts of our aviation family in India have a less sharp discipline than they need to - yes that's true. Are Indian pilots less capable than Western ones - no they are not [in my time I have employed both in numbers]. However explosive growth in India + inadequate numbers of experienced staff + very low fares & high fuel costs are a real challenge. Whether it's our passengers or our airlines - both want global quality at India prices - that is a gap which will develop cracks.

[Mohan Mathew A]

Originally Posted by Mohan Mathew A

I would like to know what happens to pilots who make such fatal basic errors. What is the punishment, do they get to fly again?

Quoting from my own earlier post.
Can some elaborate on the subsequent action that is taken on a pilot when the investigation shows it is his mistake

[androdev]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

About 37 million + commercial flights take place each year world over...

The stats that are relevant to me "personally" are the ones that are related to the region/airlines I travel by. So these global stats rarely comfort someone like me living in 3rd world countries The fundamental basis for safe flying is absolute compliance with maintenance and well-trained staff and that requires a profitable business environment and high standards of work ethics.

Whether it's our passengers or our airlines - both want global quality at India prices - that is a gap which will develop cracks.

Yes this is a serious risk factor. I just hope airlines don't have to struggle with profitability issues to a point where safety is compromised.

[TKMCE]

Originally Posted by AirbusCapt

Adding on to the above post. Agreed about increasing safety, training standards and quality. Question is how? When the dgca is staffed by clerks (IAS) from say agriculture, what sort of understanding of safety can be expected? So is the case in surveillance, audit, safety, standards, infact all parts of dgca. Airports are run by AAI, one more corrupt and lethargic government monolith. Atc is again underpaid and staffed by government agency. Dgca provides licences, both for airlines, operators and crew. They also revise/tweak duty and rest periods to suit greedy airlines interested in unbridled expansion. The next flight you fly may well be staffed by a overworked captain and a green FO who made it to his seat just because there is so much requirement, with absolutely minimal training provided and least standards mantained. But we Indians are more concerned with 1000 RS ticket prices, we wouldn't want to pay the prices for safe operations.

Agree on some but not on others.

You speak about requirement of so many pilots. But why this unchecked expansion? Why is the government allowing airlines to grow even when the balance sheets say most airlines are loosing money left right and centre.? Why do you need so many aircraft? Yes seat factors may be impressive but then at what price are the fares seats being filled?

Again blaming the passengers on this doesn't make sense. Let the airlines rationalise the capacity, lay off a few hundred pilots altogether return some aircraft - and see the results?

The industry in India had a golden chance to recover after the demise of Kingfisher. Fares should have been stabilised then But no one bothered. Everyone without exception wanted to flaunt off their seat factors.The same madness went on. More and more aircraft were brought in. Five years down the line what is happening ? Kingfisher Mk II is being played out.

Saying you don't have money to spend on safety because of low fares is irresponsible. Cut down the frequencies - you don't need 20 BOM DEL frequencies a day for an airline to survive. Half a dozen at the right timings is more than enough. Return those extra aircraft. lay off the surplus staff, spend that money on safety. Far better than not seeing the writing wall and causing untold misery later to much more of your staff.

This may sound harsh but is EXACTLY what the US airlines did in the last decade. Faced with mounting losses, they cut capacity, returned aircraft laid off people and in the last ten years the US biggies started merging.

Delta with Northwest, United with Continental, US Airways with American Southwest with Air Tran. End result ? You now have a stable market.

Until this happens in India, things are not going to get any better.

Originally Posted by Mohan Mathew A

Quoting from my own earlier post.
Can some elaborate on the subsequent action that is taken on a pilot when the investigation shows it is his mistake

From my understanding it depends entirely on the airline. There have been instances where airlines have not even waited for the official investigation report.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emirat...ht_407#Aircrew

[1lokesh]

Originally Posted by Mohan Mathew A

Quoting from my own earlier post.
Can some elaborate on the subsequent action that is taken on a pilot when the investigation shows it is his mistake

I have approached the airline with this question. Response awaited. Will update here as soon as I hear back.

[V.Narayan]

Originally Posted by androdev

The stats that are relevant to me "personally" are the ones that are related to the region/airlines I travel by. So these global stats rarely comfort someone like me living in 3rd world countries

India lies in the middle of the heap here. So this data and the averages apply to you & me. If you want to live dangerously try a smaller airline in South America.

[Thad E Ginathom]

Consequences for the pilot...

A Japanese JAL pilot, arriving drunk and with very high blood alcohol levels, to take his flight. Arrested, lost job, and now imprisoned by British court.

Severe consequences indeed.

(Source, BBC News site, yesterday)