Originally Posted by
SolidState
WOW!
After reading these posts and the "politically correct" sociology/psychology most of you seem to exhibit with all the various excuses regarding pilot "stick and ruder man" oops "stick and rudder person" skill I personally won't get in an aircraft with ANY OF YOU except The Dude...
He seems to be the ONLY one here with his head screwed on straight!
Sorry if this insults any of you but reality is reality and until people in this industry wake up and realize that not everyone has the inherent skills to be a pilot and no amount of training will every change their god given skills people such as these two will continue to plague the industry and more accidents/death with occur.
I really mean what I say here and I have to repeat a lot of the commercial pilot responses here really scares the hell outta me!
This pilot failed 5! count them FIVE checkrides AND had two other incidents with his new regional. Also the FO co from what I can take of the transcript didn't even inform that the gear had been raised and for some reason set flaps to zero with no prompt from the pilot.
PS What's going on here is nothing short of nepotism. A lot of you remind me of the medical industry and the college of physicians. You guys will back any of your kind no matter what mistakes they make and make use of things like "disrespecting the dead" or "hurting the families of the dead pilots" as logic/rational to avoid reality. Reality is both were poor at their jobs and the end result was death. I could care less about the legacy of either of them. What I do care about is pilots such of these managing to make their way into the cockpit. Hat's off to you "The Dude" the only one here from what I can tell that I would ever get into an aircraft with... and to the rest of you nepotistic politically correct types... STUFF IT!
All right SS, you should probably chill just a bit. Your concerns are valid, but you also need to understand that these 2 pilots do not deserve to be slandered. I have stated in previous posts that this accident, much like over 80% of others, was caused by pilot error in some form. However, I believe these 2 pilots are not villains that should be spoken harshly of. The "guilty" party is the "system" that allows inexperienced or ill-equipped pilots into the cockpit of an airliner.
When it comes down to it, it's all about money. It starts with the majors who farm out their lift to regionals to save money. They use other regionals to whipsaw against each other which reduces the quality of EVERYTHING!!! The regionals can't afford to pay pilots what they should make because if they do they'll lose money. If they bid too high for flying they'll lose it to another regional that is willing to do it for cheaper at the expense of the labor group.
The system is broken. The majors will never admit it, but they are the root of the problem!!! You notice how although these passengers purchased a ticket on Continental Airlines, Continental is distancing themselves from this accident as much as they possibly can.
Continental and these other majors DISGUST me with these practices, which is why I left the regionals, and the airline industry. I've flown fatigued, done more reduced rest overnights than I can count, eaten sh*t out of vending machines for dinner....all for pennies. It's crap what regional pilots have to go through to try to get to a major.
I hope my previous posts have not come across as personal attacks or slanders against these pilots. My heart breaks for them and the other victims.
P.S. I'd like to hear Larry Kellner's opinion on this topic. After Gordon Bethune left, he made it his mission to destroy/dismantle ExpressJet (which, WAS one of the only decent regionals and has TOP NOTCH training) and go to the lowest bidder, which just happened to be flying these passengers to Buffalo that night.