Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Almost 1 in 3 pilots in Pakistan have fake licenses, aviation minister says

cnn.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 358 posts

Re: Almost 1 in 3 pilots in Pakistan have fake licenses, aviation minister says

#241

Post by rob74 »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #214
teruakohatu wrote: post #18

"PIA has grounded all its pilots who hold fake licenses, effective immediately." I would have thought anyone with a fake license was already grounded. It sounds like they knew this was an issue and just looked the other way.

It is a power issue. Everyone was aware, but the remaining pilots refused to let the authorities do anything. The only reason this is happening is because of Covid-19. No flights, so pilots can't threaten to boycott flying. Let's see if the authorities have enough political capital to follow through with firing them all.

I assume it was only "everyone" inside the airline? Because if I as a potential passenger knew that 30% of pilots in my country were flying with fake licenses, I wouldn't set foot in another plane...

Re: Almost 1 in 3 pilots in Pakistan have fake licenses, aviation minister says

#242

Post by phire »

craftinator wrote: post #93
VBprogrammer wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that they where around 80 knots faster than they should have been probably helped a lot. That's a heck of a lot of excess energy.

The excessive speed helped? Can you explain, I would imagine that going faster would cause more engine damage while being dragged.

More engine damage, probably.

But the excessive speed is what allowed the plane to lift off again.

Re: Almost 1 in 3 pilots in Pakistan have fake licenses, aviation minister says

#244

Post by briandear »

taborj wrote: post #137
ciarannolan wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is any cockpit audio removed from this? It's pretty damn silent for two guys who are about to smash an airplane into a residential area.

You're only hearing the transmissions they made (likely recorded via the ATC side). Any in-cockpit conversations/panic would not have been recorded, or at least not released.

> Any in-cockpit conversations/panic would not have been recorded

They are recorded.

Re: Almost 1 in 3 pilots in Pakistan have fake licenses, aviation minister says

#245

Post by ceejayoz »

seppin wrote: post #234
ceejayoz wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If an armored convoy is not enough to protect your nuclear weapons... The concern appears to be, at least partially, "the Americans will watch the convoys via satellite and know where we've got them all stored".

Considering the article it looks like they know either way.

The idea is not perfect secrecy, but plausible "we might have one more than you think you know about" that matters.

Re: Almost 1 in 3 pilots in Pakistan have fake licenses, aviation minister says

#246

Post by taborj »

briandear wrote: post #244
taborj wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're only hearing the transmissions they made (likely recorded via the ATC side). Any in-cockpit conversations/panic would not have been recorded, or at least not released.

> Any in-cockpit conversations/panic would not have been recorded They are recorded.

or at least not released.

Re: Almost 1 in 3 pilots in Pakistan have fake licenses, aviation minister says

#247

Post by phire »

tux1968 wrote: post #45

The fact that the landing gear lever was pushed down into the extended position, and then the plane decided not to deploy the landing gear because of the overspeed issue is a horrible UI. The lever should refuse to budge unless moving it will in fact deploy the landing gear. These pilots are horrible, but that doesn't mean we can't improve the controls still.

There are many reasons why the landing gear might fail to fully extend and lock.

There is no way the lever can know about all of these ahead of time.

Which is why the checklists require the pilots check the landing gear status lights to check the landing gear is down and locked.

Re: Almost 1 in 3 pilots in Pakistan have fake licenses, aviation minister says

#248

Post by chooseaname »

briandear wrote: post #239
jessermeyer wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ignorant of ... lowering the landing gears to land? It's just astonishing.

Gear up landings are one of the most common insurance claims for aircraft. It’s more common than you might think, even with experienced pilots.

Is there any kind of indicator in the cockpit to remind the pilot? A light? A voice (like the stall voice), that says, "Hey doofus, you're descending and close to landing, so LOWER THE GEAR!"

Re: Almost 1 in 3 pilots in Pakistan have fake licenses, aviation minister says

#249

Post by heelix »

jessermeyer wrote: post #223
m3h wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Pakistan, there is a culture of becoming overconfident and ignorant of the rules in the airline industry as the pilots age. This was also noted by the Aviation minister when he presented the PIA crash report to the assembly. It should be noted that two of the previous large crashes involving an Airblue and a Bhoja airplane were both concluded to be pilot error with the report pointing to overconfidence and negativ…

Ignorant of ... lowering the landing gears to land? It's just astonishing.

It gets really easy to miss something like that. I've not missed the landing gear - but something goes a bit sideways and you are out of practice - things get skipped.

I've, for example, left the carb heat on when I had to go around. The hot summer air, combined with a C152 at max load, made for a hair raising takeoff. At 500' or so, the instructor casually asked if I was going to turn off the carb heat, which improves engine performance quite a bit.

Figure I'll fly 30 or so hours this year. The normal workflows get rusty, which is why checklists are such a thing.

When someone does a belly up landing, what usually ends up being the expensive part is the prop smacking the tarmac, the engine must be rebuilt.

This is what it looks like from the inside. Notice the beep that the pilot... missed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-K4QHpVXtxI

Re: Almost 1 in 3 pilots in Pakistan have fake licenses, aviation minister says

#250

Post by VBprogrammer »

not2b wrote: post #116
albntomat0 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's concerning that they have such a specific number of pilots with fake licenses. It's not like this is something surprising that they're rushing to respond to, at least that's the impression I got from the article.

If the issue is that someone else is taking tests for the fakers, how do they know who's a faker? They could flag the obviously incompetent people for extra testing, and possibly some of them have been informed on, but how do they know precisely who is a faker? Some of the pilots have a military background (flew for the air force) so those can be presumed to be real pilots, but the rest?

I hope against hope that when they say they don't have a licence we're talking about something less egregious than 'never had any formal training as a pilot'. Something like didn't bother getting a type rating for the specific aircraft type or failed to renew their licence at the correct point.
Post reply on HN