Steelrails
Joined: 12 Mar 2009
Location: Earth, Solar System
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 Posted: Fri Apr 24, 2015 12:20 am Post subject: |
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| Kepler wrote: |
| Korean culture definitely did have something to do with the crash in San Francisco- at least that's what the flying pilot told US investigators. He said he was very nervous about landing the plane, but he couldn't abort and make a second attempt because he wasn't the senior pilot. Furthermore, there was a third pilot present who warned the other pilots four times that the plane was descending too rapidly. He was ignored because he the youngest pilot. |
Again, that's not only Korean culture, that is general flying culture. Do you think on western airlines you have copilots and junior pilots always overriding their superiors? As was shown in the Tenerife disaster, the problem of junior pilots confronting their superiors was also a factor in western airlines. This reared its head again in the 1994 Fairchild AFB crash. "Pilot Culture" was probably a factor in Southwest Airlines Flight 1455 It reared its head again in a 2010 crash in Alaska and again in First Air Flight 6560 (A Canadian airline). In the First Air Flight the first officer raised objections and the captain ignored him. This is a problem in any hierarchical command structure, particularly one as sensitive about "who is in command" as an airplane crew. You have to balance challenging your superiors in an emergency with preventing a "mine is bigger than yours" and two pilots fighting and arguing over what to do in the event of an emergency.
It failed here, but its not a uniquely Korean phenomenon. Based upon what I read, it wasn't so much a problem of the senior pilot ignoring the junior pilot, it was the junior pilot not declaring that the senior pilot needed to take over and their unfamiliarity with the auto throttle. But before you say pilot training is uniquely bad with Korean airlines, look at Southwest Flight 1248 where inadequate training in the autobrake system caused a fatal accident.
In UPS Flight 1354, the following are listed as factors in causing the crash-
"1) the flight crew’s failure to properly configure and verify the flight management computer for the profile approach; 2) the captain’s failure to communicate his intentions to the first officer once it became apparent the vertical profile was not captured; 3) the flight crew’s expectation that they would break out of the clouds at 1,000 feet above ground level due to incomplete weather information; 4) the first officer’s failure to make the required minimums callouts; 5) the captain’s performance deficiencies likely due to factors including, but not limited to, fatigue, distraction, or confusion, consistent with performance deficiencies exhibited during training, and; 6) the first officer’s fatigue due to acute sleep loss resulting from her ineffective off-duty time management and circadian factor"
Now is western/American culture to blame for these failures? That's the danger of the culture argument, the selective application of it. |
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