Originally Posted by
RJSAviator76
My previous job was overseas. What do you say when a local check airman passes another local check airman who is literally 50/50 on a V1 cut i.e. literally crashes on a routine V1 cut roughly half the time because he ‘guesses the wrong rudder’? When was the last time you crashed the sim? How about on a V1 cut?
Or how about when a local check airman won’t let you add 20 knots to Vr in reported windshear position and purposefully tries to crash you? Sorry, no ALPA Training Committee.
I won’t even go into the whole saving face culture that literally led to a perfectly good 777 crashing into a seawall. They also tried to blame Boeing.
It’s not “we are AMERICANS and we are better than everyone else.” That’s the political correctness thing I was talking about... Our motherboards are wired differently. Would you have any qualms speaking up if you saw your captain screwing up? In this country, we take something as simple as that for granted. In many other parts of the world, you do not make captain lose face. Think about that.
Things change, to answer your question, there was a time, that a junior pilot did not speak up at UA. The culture was that you never challenge a Captain's authority unless you thought you were going to die and that was not always obvious. The MDW, SLC and PDX accidents crew members guessed wrong and paid for it tragically. But, those were high visibility cases. I had one standards captain tell me the Stanine test (predecessor to Hogan) was working very well, crew members were not speaking back to the Captains. All of this changed after PDX, later generations are the beneficiaries of CLR and CRM, but it was not always the case
It took training and a corporate culture change. ALPA and safety advocates like Dave Fitzgerald (senior) were instrumental to make this mindset change with the rank and file. This will happen again with pilots all over the world. I don't buy the Asian face-saving excuse, maybe, when we were doing the same thing, but not now. If a problem exists with foreign pilots it is a lack of adequate training, confidence in their airmanship and their corporations not living up to their responsibilities for profits. US companies went through this, but it was not easy and we had to change the rules to ensure our pilots are trained, rested and use the best practices.
I was incensed after the Lyon Air accident, at the time, I thought this Boeing betrayal was to sell their airplane as if it was the same as the classic for marketing and profit motives. Obviously it was more complicated than that, but so far no one has gone to jail and Boeing will survive because it is too big to fail.
After the Ethiopian accident, I was apoplectic. It became clear no pilot should ever trust Boeing, Airbus or the regulators again. Line pilots must be part of the design process, even if it might cost the next promotion, we owe it to the people that trust our profession. The opinion of the pilot now in seat 36B.