Almost 1 in 3 pilots in Pakistan have fake licenses, aviation minister says • Hacker News Board

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

#281

Post by baybal2 » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 9:40 PM UTC

andrewksl wrote: post #49

I'm genuinely, in a completely non-judgmental way, interested to understand what systemic forces lead to such a staggeringly high percentage of this brand of fraud.

I frequently have to do engineering projects in many of *stans, and African countries (currently stuck in one thanks to quarantine.)

Very often, using a "fixer" is the only way to do anything, as the "proper way" to do things is defunct as such (like entire ministry offices, and sections only working on the paper)

I'm genuinely scared by how much those "fixers" can do, as it seems to be no red line whatsoever on what even a man of my meagre income by tech industry standards can get with them.

A pocket change of a man making low 6 digit income can make section chiefs of ministries running circles around you.

One time had a problem with digital signature server of a tax office being down few days prior to the filing deadline. Called a fixer, fixer calls "a man in the ministry" with the same name, and surname as a vice-minister, 10 minutes later a fax with a tax certificate pops. Later I learned that thousands of companies in entire country had to pay huge fines for late filling because government server was down, and none of them were given any leniency.

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

#282

Post by FabHK » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 9:42 PM UTC

tux1968 wrote: post #273

m000z0rz wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people are fixating on one problem here as an example of how broken the UI is. What about the problem where a pilot gets great down, does a go around, and forgets to put the gear up? In this case, how could anyone defend not having the plane out the gear up automatically, with warnings? Just because we have an "obvious example right in front of us" does not mean it is the only failure mode that needs to be co…

Thank you. There is lots of room for improvement. Why everyone is so intent on defending the status-quo given its obvious deficiencies is mind boggling.

I find your certainty about something you appear to know nothing about mind boggling. Every crash is a deficiency of sorts, so let’s just tell Airbus to build planes that don’t crash! Easy! Let’s just have peace instead of war! Obvious!

It is not sufficient to point out “obvious deficiencies”, one must also point out possible improvements. As other posters (with more patience than I can muster) have pointed out, it is not obvious how to improve this. Putting a lock in place to prevent movement of the lever adds another level of complexity that can itself fail. This is well known and has been extensively studied (a classic paper is No good deed goes unpunished: Case studies of incidents and potential incidents caused by protective systems [0]).

Listen, for example, to this episode of “Undercover Economist” Tim Hartford’s Cautionary Tales [1] (though the example given might itself be problematic [2]).

Airplanes are extraordinarily safe already (look at the amazingly low accident rate, given those fallible, sometimes even negligent and incompetent people that fly them).

Contrary to your facile assertion “There is lots of room for improvement”, there are very few obvious improvements. Change something and you might prevent one accident but enable another one.

As an example: terrorists enter the cockpit. Easy, obvious: lock the door! Ok. Suicidal pilot locks out the other pilot and flies into a mountain. Easy, obvious: unlock the door. GOTO 10. It’s not obvious. These are hard problems that many competent people have thought about in depth. That’s why “everyone” is so “intent on defending the status-quo”.

In other areas, there might be “obvious improvements”, eg regulatory matters, but even there it’s not easy. Aviation is operating within an international framework, there are rules and international treaties and regulatory bodies and stakeholders and so on.

But my main point is that it’s absurd to accuse Airbus of overlooking an obvious improvement without even a cursory understanding of the matter.

[0] https://aiche.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/prs.68...

[1] https://timharford.com/2019/11/cautionary-tales-ep-3-lala-la...

[2] https://leancrew.com/all-this/2019/11/galileo-and-failure/

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

#283

Post by redis_mlc » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 9:47 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #206

thrill wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This gets frequently abused in the US. Some of the abuse seems trivial on the surface - for example a friend can't legally pay you to fly him to a meeting far enough away to make driving undesirable on a clear pleasant day, even though you both frequently fly together personally on the weekends. However, there's no legal surprises on the FAA regulations and no excuse that a pilot can make that it seemed ok, as the re…

14 CFR 61.113 (c) allows the passenger to compensate the pilot so long as the pilot is not paying less than the pro rata share of the operating expenses.

No, there's many more restrictions than that, including common purpose, and not being a scheduled flight.

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

#284

Post by _jal » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 9:48 PM UTC

toomanyrichies wrote: post #260

walrus01 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a completely illogical approach. An armored convoy stands out like a sore thumb in Rawalpindi. An ordinary slightly beat up, 6-8 year old Suzuki Bolan does not. Maybe send out a few decoy high security vehicles with uniformed crews going in a few different directions, and then send out the Bolan going elsewhere. Bolan: https://www.google.com/search?q=suzuki+bolan&client=ubuntu&h...

In software circles, this is called "security by obscurity" and is frowned upon. And if it's a bad idea with software, I'd argue it's also a bad idea with nuclear weapons.

People constantly misuse that quote to claim that "obscurity" should never be used. This is false; denying your opponent information is a critical component of a well-designed security process.

It should not be the only mechanism employed.

(I have no clue what, if any, other measures Pakistan employed.)

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

#285

Post by afwaller » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 9:50 PM UTC

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.

They did not try to lower the gear on their first landing. It would have lowered. They raised the gear. It was in the commanded gear up (stowed position) when they landed and the indicator would have shown it was up.

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

#286

Post by redis_mlc » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 9:51 PM UTC

deskamess wrote: post #237

bathtub365 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me it simply sounds like all of the unsafe planes crashed and now the safest one is the one left ;)

Damn right... survival of the fittest.

That actually happened in SE Asia.

One airliner had a couple of incidents, including a tail strike which damaged the pressure bulkhead, and then crashed.

That boosted the reliability average of all the other remaining airliners in the region.

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

#287

Post by schoen » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 9:57 PM UTC

baybal2 wrote: post #275

dragandj wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not so sure that nuclear weapons would help in these kinds of regional conflicts against Russia. It’s not that Russia officially invaded Ukraine (although in practice it did), but it stirred up local population (of largely Russian ethnicity) and then gave them logistical support and protection. So, if Ukraine had nuclear weapons, what would it do with it? Strike Russia, who has many more nuclear warheads, and str…

> Strike Russia, who has many more nuclear warheads, and stronger anti-nuclear protection? Yes, what's use of a superweapon if you can't make use of it? From my childhood experience, some times you need to commit without reservations to completely hopeless, no chance fights, as the only hope for a way out. Strong adversaries often don't expect the weak to even attempt to fight back.

There is a whole major plot in one of the Three-Body Problem books about this issue. It arises in maybe a kind of contrived way, but then it's explicitly posed in more or less the way you said.

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

#288

Post by redis_mlc » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 9:58 PM UTC

VBprogrammer wrote: post #250

not2b wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> If the issue is that someone else is taking tests for the fakers, how do they know who's a faker?

I can only talk about what I've heard in India.

1) No test is done. An official with access to blanks just prints another one for $1,000. The govt. could match up tests with the complete list of pilots with authorized licenses and get an exact count.

2) An impostor does the written and practical (flying) tests. This is common in IT also.

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

#289

Post by schoen » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 10:01 PM UTC

chooseaname wrote: post #248

briandear wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!"

In this case, this video linked elsewhere in this thread described this happening here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zO5rXxJRmf4&t=5m48s

(I think this is meant to be an accurate simulation of the same type of aircraft under the same conditions.)

The current top comment in this thread also quotes the investigator report for this crash as saying

> According to the FDR and CVR recordings several warnings and alerts such as over-speed, landing gear not down and ground proximity alerts were disregarded.

So, yep. Although in the simulation, at least, this particular one is not a voice alert but is an annoying bell (with details of the reasons for the alert available elsewhere in the cockpit).

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

#290

Post by baybal2 » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 10:03 PM UTC

seesawtron wrote: post #39

On a smaller but more widespread scale is the issue of fake licenses for driving automobiles. It is common knowledge how you can get these licenses easily in "some" (similar) countries without ever giving a driving test and/or going through any sort of written exam where you have to go through the rules of the road. Some argue that they are only endangering their own lives on the road but one can see how that is comp…

Believe or not, in Russia, we had fake civil servants including fake judges, and prosecutors.

Fake academicians, and fake professors.

My favourites were fake doctors, with fake general surgeons included.

Ah, the best I think really were the fake dentists...