That was an extraordinarily fascinating article.
From what he said in the article, it wasn’t really a matter of the odds catching up with them, it was more of an issue of maintaining the same accident rate that they had in the past.
I’m not all that well informed about civil aviation (even though I do have a subscription to Aviation and Space Weekly… I know a little bit more) but I had no inkling It was this kind of issue.
I’m really interested now… I wonder what other countries in the region are like in comparison. The Japanese? The Chinese? The Filipinos?
It’s interesting, I would think that even though the Koreans and the Japanese are culturally at each other’s throat, there are certain characteristics that both possess (that the author talked about in this article such as the inability to confront the authority etc.)
Even with that, I would be very surprised to hear that Japan had generally poor pilots in the same fashion. It seems like it would be completely out of character. It is as if they couldn’t bear to be incompetent pilots. (This is all conjecture on my part, I have no idea about any of this.)
That’s why I find this really interesting. I just assumed that the Koreans would have pretty decent pilots generally.
I can't remember the last time I heard about a Japanese commercial airline crash without some kind of weather complication. I don't think this has anything to do with rote memorization - these people were just cutting corners. They failed to go through every scenario possible. There's no creative thinking going on here - pilots are simply doing what others who came before them did in order to get out of sticky situations. These people did the minimum necessary to pass the tests instead of going above and beyond to make sure they could handle all eventualities.
I am a retired U.S. Army pilot. Both rotary and fixed wing. If I can relate my experience on a Japan Airlines flight, here it goes.
There we were, 11 hours into a SFO-HND flight. Just approaching the Japanese home islands. Suddenly, all the entertainment screens go blank. The very nice flight attendants grow alarmed. They are all talking to each other mutedly in Japanese. We, of course, have no idea what they’re saying. We seem to be the only non-Japanese on board. The other passengers start to get worried. They are all, of course, Japanese. The Flight attendants try to reassure them, in their language. The Mrs. and I, decidely Gaijin, are not informed nor reassured by the crew.
Then, a Flight Officer emrges from the cockpit despondent and confers with the Flight Attendants, in Japanese, obvioulsy. This is right next to our seats. The Flight Officer seems to be troubleshooting something in the mid-aricraft galley but the results appear...even more alarming!
Now, this is my first trans-pacific flight and we are over water somewhere between Russia and japan. If we go down here, I’m thinking, there’s no chance of us surviving a ditching much less the freezing waters that await us.
The Flight Officer returns to the deck (cockpit) all upset and embarrased. The Flight Attendants grow more alarmed. The wife is asleep and clueless next to me. I think I see one Flight Attendant crying. I am, like, oh shit.
The Captain (I ascertain this because of the gravity of his tone and marked leadership and a good dose of kudasais), starts jabbering something in Japanese, to which the rest of the passengers react to with what I would categorize as “oh, noes”, in their language.
Still hundreds of miles from any land, at night, and in freezing weather (mind you, all I’ve done on this flight is stare at the map and flight progress on my personal TV screen), I’m thinking, oh crap, what the hell’s going on!
So, in my most diplomatic and reverent tone, I approach the head Flight Attendant and ask her if she could translate for us poor Gaijin barbarians what the Captain just announced because I’m already trying to find my flotation device beneath my seat and I can’t find it. Dear Lord, she starts crying. Again!
She sheepeshly tells me, in English, that she, the Captain, Japan Airlines and the Empire of Japan is deeply embarrased to inform me that our airplane’s in-flight entertainment system is malfunctioning and that we won’t be able to finish our FIFTH in-flight movie before final approach into Tokyo-Haneda!
Jesus!