What does Performance Enhancing Drugs (PED's) have to do with this topic? Was Lance Armstrong part of that Northwest crew? Guess I shoulda watched the Oprah interview.

Just had the pairing I'm on at the moment changed by the company.
No longer deadheading on CZ they switched me to Asiana, so I'm guessing the rumor about CZ being taken off the approved list is true.

Thanks to the O.P for documenting his issues and making things safer for us all and thanks to the company for doing the right thing.

To be fair to the guys in question (who no longer have jobs), they didn't overfly. ATC made them fly past the airport and populated areas to perform a series of confidence maneuvers. Every knows what they did wrong but nobody has heard the story of what ATC and the company screwed up. Remember, it is almost always a chain of mistakes that lead to an accident.

I have just heard through indirect channels that over 1100 DHs have been cancelled on China Southern. I'm not sure when the decision was made or by whom, but I do think that it is a good move for us at least temporarily until this issue is resolved. As above posts suggest, this might have been a singular error of the crew and not a culture at this airline. I just didn't like being the one having to "ride" it out.

One thing that does bother me is that I'm not sure if it was my actions of the ops report and emails making this change, or was it this forum..... All I know is that I still have not received any formal response even to let me know that the ops report or emails were received in the first place. That I find disconcerting.....

Are you sure you don't wear brown pants?

DH Changed
 

Same here, DH changed to a more respectable carrier. Thanks sunburn for your ops report -- more than likely that's what got the company's/association's attention. I've only ever submitted one ops report and I received feedback in about 3 days. I submitted it on a Saturday and received a reply on Tuesday.

Impossible, his company already took proactive action and rebooked future DHs ... ;)

Might be some legal concerns they have to run through the lawyers before or if they respond.

Don't know why this was'nt brought up but the question I have is why the O.P. did not address his concerns to the crew upon arrival at dest.?

http://imageshack.us/a/img708/2789/birdfluflight.gif

I was wondering the same? Hey Capt WTH?

He landed in CAN
 

According to Google, that flight goes NRT to CAN.

So, you are entering communist China, do you really want to call the Captain to task?:confused:

Perhaps show him the pics you took?:eek:

You might get to meet the local cops, and have a little visit to the big house on some trumped up charges.

They would also take your camera to destroy the evidence.

Personally, I am of the opinion that the OP did the right thing.

Of course, you guys do what you want.

There are ways of asking questions by not being offensive and it's called tact.
I,m sure the crew was well aware of what they had on the wings and showing pictures would be a moot point.

Um, pardon me for not finding the value in this. What would you see being the best possible outcome should your suggested course of action have come to pass?

I wouldn't be surprised if there is no written response. They (the Company) just took it for action. Good on them! No sense inflaming the Chinese with something in writing. Just my guess, though.

MG2

Possibly a good answer from the crew during the course of conversation.

What possible "good answer" could the crew have given? Answer: none.
Result: defensive crew. Good luck with a positive outcome in that situation.

Sunburn:

Good on ya for raising the BS flag and keeping the rest of us safe. I had a similar experience years ago on a domestic carrier. I complained twice to the head Stu before take off, and the carrier pulled off the taxiway to deice. I was later thanked by the captain. (Ground crew had lied to flight crew that plane was deiced when it was not. I witnessed the entire affair).

I would file a complaint with the FAA since CZ flies into the US. I would also be careful when going thru China as they may find some way of retaliating against you. Might want to contact the embassy and consulate in PVG and CAN in case they come knocking on your hotel room in the middle of the night. Let them know what happened. Get a local phone number in case. Don't go anywhere in Chicom without a wingman.

I was wondering if this could happen at all the airports and all the Chinese airlines? The other day we were sitting at ICN airport, and everyone was de-icing, Korean air, Asiana, Cathay, Thai, Singapore and of course there were delays for everyone. But I saw all the Chinese airlines taxi out, line up and off they go.

I think it has more to do with keeping your bonuses than airline not allowing deice. I wonder what would happen to your safety bonus when you crash and burn?

True. I can't remember, didn't ATC repeatedtly call them and the calls went unanswered?

Also, if, again IF that was the case, who's to say they would have answered an ACARS or SelCall (if applicable) message from company?

I'm not bashing those guys. But sadly it's been proven, at the end of the day, the responsibility falls on the crew.

If it can be passed down to the lowest level/highest profile level of accountability, it will.

And yes, you're right. It would be interesting to see what th fallout was on the ATC/dispatch end was.

Yeah discretion is the better part of valor when tweaking the nose of a very large and powerful totalitarian regime.

It probably would have been OK, but you could end up PNGed. The OP could still end up PNG if they find out who he is...

He could've tried this
 

Chinese for "what the hell"=究竟想怎么样!
Say it to the Captain, then the cop, then the judge, then the jailor, then the nice guy from the embassy say's it to you :)

Just conjecturing, but if they flew out of radio coverage with ATC, as frequently happens, they might have noticed the flashing acars msg or selcall chime. I've had it happen in the middle of the night when ATC forgets to hand you off and you fly out of coverage, and gotten an acars msg to contact ATC on xxx freq from dispatch.

Again, true, and don't disagree. As KC10 pointed out, most of us will never know what REALLY happened as far as the extent to which company/ATC tried to reach them.

Whether it was ATC calls that may have gone unnoticed, an ACARS that went unnoticed, ATC trying to relay to another aircraft to contact them as frequently happens, trying to reach them over guard/121.5, etc etc etc etc........

I agree. To get back to the subject, it's good to see that FDX did the right thing and cancelled their DH's on CZ. It would be nice if UPS did the same thing, but all they look at is the savings by using a cheap airline. I'd be happily surprised if we did it as well, but certainly not holding my breath.

Should there be a list?
 

Another useless list .:rolleyes:
BI must have needed the advertising revenue .

"But I saw all the Chinese airlines taxi out, line up and off they go."

Yep, standard practice. FWIW, I flew for Air China (A330 skipper) for 3 years and nearly every time we deiced it was under protest from the remaining (Chinese) crew. I insisted on deice one night from PEK when the jet had been parked in SN for 24 hours and had snow on the wings up to the top of the fuse and the guys still tried to pretend "we be ok captain, no need for deice".

Also, when you do convince them to deice, they use Chinese made fluids that do not adhere to any standards and they make up whatever holdover time will get you away without delay. And the engineer will tell you its whatever type fluid you asked for.

"Is it type baked beans fluid"

"ahhhh yes captain, thats what it is"

And the engineer will meet you at the crew bus and try to convince you that the wing is clean, no need for you to check and will follow you around hoping you dont take a peek at the wing from the mid cabin windows.

In many many ways these guys just dont get it!!!!

Rant over, sorry, now its back to my post Chinese contract therapy!!!!!

Calm blue ocean, calm blue ocean, calm.........

Oicur, when I worked at another (South) Asian carrier (not my most recent), I would just start snapping pictures when something like that happened. The situation usually got rectified pretty quickly. In this case the video will do some good, at least temporarily. OP would do well to avoid China for awhile, though.

Oh, yeah. Well done. :)

As for confronting the crew ... the folly and danger of doing such a thing in totalitarian China has already been mentioned. Note also that the English skill of many Chinese pilots is atrocious, at least among those flying domestic routes . They likely wouldn't have understood you.

rotorhead

"The situation usually got rectified pretty quickly".

I flew for several South Asian carriers also (probably same as you lah) and these sorts of issues would slowly get solved also. One by one.

But not in China. Presenting a picture of a wing covered in snow and ice to your supervisors in a Chinese airline is not viewed very well. What would appear to a westerner to be an attempt to highlight a safety deficiency would be seen by a Chinese manager as questioning the honesty of the people charged with dispatching the jet.

Reads like some of the event report replies I have gotten

Am I the only one thinking- Man, we have been wasting a huge amount of money and time on this whole deicing business- after seeing this? I saw that Russian Airbus video a few months ago, and now this. ***? I thought something like one-one-millionth of a centimeter of frost can reduce your lift by 800%. Maybe the deicing fluid industry is in bed with the FAA? Screw it, I'm not wasting any more time at the deice pad ever again. I'm going 'Chinese Style'!

Is "Chinese Style" the same as Air Florida style?:eek:

MG2

There was alot more wrong with Palm 90 than just skipping the 2nd deice.

I'm glad Boeing and Airbus wings are so robust, but if this was a CRJ, you would've been front-page news.

Correct. The real problem wasn't ice on the wings, it was ice on the EPR probes due to the crew not turning on engine anti-ice. Actual thrust at T/O was something like 60%. Ice on the wings didn't help.

Between the power setting mentioned above and the MD-80 wing having issues, we have waaay too many procedures and derivatives of fluid formulas. Common sense, what? no! We need to deice every single aircraft with type IV safeco double deluxe industrial hold anytime Ewins says there could be a 5 minute delay due to frost for the night sort........and fly into the sort no matter what, even if there is 6 inches of clear ice in the forecast.....:rolleyes::rolleyes:

I work in Japan, not China mind you but I do fly in and out of China a lot. For what I have seen (and I couldn't care less, not defending anybody) airlines in China tend to be way too conservative in terms of their de-icing, I have seen them de ice even when there is no need to. I have a feeling there is a problem with this particular crew and not necessarily with the company's safety culture per say.

The problem in this instance was a crew unfamiliar with icing conditions, who did a reverse thrust power back out of the gate and covered the engine probes with ice. They therefore had erroneously high EPR indications resulting in far reduced power settings. The first officer mentioned it twice on the roll but was ignored by the captain. Perfectly good jet hits the 14th Ave, bridge because crew were unfamiliar with deicing and departure procedures in icing conditions.

You have to wonder, with respect to CZ, what else they miss because they obviously do not understand the physics behind flying airplanes. Typical push button mentality of these fly-by-night airlines.

So, does ALPA have any input into what carriers we deadhead on? Isn't safety our number one priority (or is it VEBA, I get confused sometimes).

Leading edge devices are wonderful things, especially when they are heated.

add Aeroflot to your list.. when I was at Gemini we had a few airlines on our no-fly list, and those were two... As a side note, I flew into Almaty Kazakstan quite a bit and they'd always look at us strange when we wanted to de-ice our 747's when they had some frost on the wings... some would actually try to argue we didn't need it... sigh.