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

121–130 of 358 posts

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

#121

Post by chaostheory »

thev4lley wrote: post #60

I don't think most people appreciate the level of regulation that ensures safety and quality of life in Western countries. Go to many countries outside of that spectrum and you may still see beautiful architecture and more. Now did the team that worked on that project have the necessary experience to drive a safe and long lasting solution? Does the concrete and steel used follow good standards? This means that it may…

Everyone should be worried then that the airlines have outsourced aircraft maintenance and repair to other countries where the FAA has little to no oversight.

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113877...

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

#122

Post by jessermeyer »

sitic wrote: post #38

From the preliminary report: 'At 500 ft, the FDR indicates: landing gear retracted, slat/flap configuration 3, airspeed 220 knots IAS, descent rate 2000 ft/min. 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. The landing was undertaken with landing gears retracted. The aircraft touched the runway surface on its…

The pilot was reportedly well seasoned. I have my doubts about the quality of the report given the incredible mishandling of the situation.

"Imran Narejo, an official of the PIA Pilots Association, said Gul was a seasoned pilot with 18,000 hours of experience including over 4,000 hours in the A320."

https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2020/05/9616e4079ce1-at-l...

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

#123

Post by kakwa_ »

yalogin wrote: post #102

This is quite scary actually, something I didn’t think would happen. I can see people faking engineering degrees or even medicine as they can then try to evade all work and get away by relying on the team. Pilot is not that, they have to fly it and they kill themselves too if things go wrong.

The Pakistani situation is actually not unique.

There are precedents, for example:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Mexico_City_Learjet_crash

A Mexican government Learjet plane carrying the Secretary of the Interior crashed in Mexico city due to a mishandling of the landing approach by the pilots (they flew to close to a 767 and got blown away by wake turbulence).

The pilots were in fact not qualified, and in fact got fake licenses to operate the Learjet from corrupt flying schools.

> Pilot Martín Olíva and co-pilot Álvaro Sánchez, were not certified to operate the Learjet 45. The investigation concluded that both pilots had received fraudulent certifications: Captain Olíva lied about the number of training flights he had made, and had issues on the few training flights he did complete, while Captain Sánchez lied about being a Learjet 45 instructor. Both men had taken advantage of a corrupt system to get false training documents and some unsigned Learjet 45 certification forms from their flight schools. These revelations led Mexican authorities to suspend the licences of both flight schools.

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

#124

Post by mrep »

thev4lley wrote: post #60

I don't think most people appreciate the level of regulation that ensures safety and quality of life in Western countries. Go to many countries outside of that spectrum and you may still see beautiful architecture and more. Now did the team that worked on that project have the necessary experience to drive a safe and long lasting solution? Does the concrete and steel used follow good standards? This means that it may…

I'm assuming it's regulation, cause I'm super happy the utility poles around me don't look like this [0]. There's even comments about how people die because nothing is grounded there.

[0]: https://old.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/gn16k8/cable_managemen...

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

#125

Post by polartx »

yingw787 wrote: post #101
thev4lley wrote: post #60

I don't think most people appreciate the level of regulation that ensures safety and quality of life in Western countries. Go to many countries outside of that spectrum and you may still see beautiful architecture and more. Now did the team that worked on that project have the necessary experience to drive a safe and long lasting solution? Does the concrete and steel used follow good standards? This means that it may…

Apparently there's chatter in recent days on China's internet regarding the Three Gorges Dam, and how it's setting / warping due to reservoir backpressure (pictures in link): https://www.theepochtimes.com/experts-warn-of-chinas-three-g... Apparently there's heavy rainfall this year. 300-400 million people live below the dam. I'm unfamiliar with domestic travel restrictions within China, but I can't imagine it's gotte…

Look no further than the Coca Codo dam that China built for Ecuador. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/24/world/americas/ecuador-ch... Not only did it basically cost Ecuador any sovereignty it may have had, the project is a complete disaster. Equipment is degrading at 10x its depreciation schedule. The dam has never been able to function at the output levels it promised, and the deaths that have occurred during and after its construction is reminiscent of another massive Chinese construction project, some kind of wall, I think.

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

#126

Post by saagarjha »

mav3rick wrote: post #67
sriram_malhar wrote: post #31

I heard this anecdote in India, and I'm not sure if it is apocryphal. There was a small airline flying turboprops to service a Himalayan region. Someone asked whether it was safe to fly these planes and the response was as hilarious as it was scary: "Yes, sir. It is very safe. They used to have 11 planes, 10 of them crashed and now they are really really careful with the one left" :)

Way to take a joke and extrapolate it to the truth. Many friends worked hard for their licenses.

> I'm not sure if it is apocryphal

Seems likes they took it with a reasonable grain of salt?

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

#127

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

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.

I get your point, and I'm sure that was an area of discussion during the system design. From my perspective, though, it introduces a potential failure point that may not be worthwhile.

If you want the lever to not move when the landing gear controller will ignore the command, then you need to lock the lever in place. If that locking mechanism fails during a normal approach, you have an airplane landing with gear up.

I'm sure the FMEA (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Failure_mode_and_effects_analy...) in this case will conclude that it's more likely that the lock will fail closed than that the checklist was ignored and both pilots will not realize that they're trying to lower gear at too high a speed since that requires three faults to occur: ignore checklist, pilot in command attempting gear down at airspeed too high, and copilot not noticing that.

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

#128

Post by newyankee »

yingw787 wrote: post #21

Older article, but apparently Pakistan carts its nuclear weapons around in regular delivery vans: https://www.wired.com/2011/11/pakistan-nukes-delivery-vans/ I personally think this is a bad idea.

Didn't want to add politics to this, but i hope they get more funding for safety. Sadly, most of the funding they get from US and other Western countries is gobbled up by the Army which is the most powerful institution in the country. Their economic situation is a little worse now and it is likely they will become a vassal state of China in the future as well. China will take the role of USA in the country if it goes the other way.

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

#129

Post by Lammy »

kiba wrote: post #87
thev4lley wrote: post #60

I don't think most people appreciate the level of regulation that ensures safety and quality of life in Western countries. Go to many countries outside of that spectrum and you may still see beautiful architecture and more. Now did the team that worked on that project have the necessary experience to drive a safe and long lasting solution? Does the concrete and steel used follow good standards? This means that it may…

And yet the construction here in the US have reputation of doing shoddy works, not doing work on time, and being more expensive than they should be, while skirting any regulations any way they can. Or at least that's my impression.

That is my impression of certain projects/contractors at least, like the replacement eastern span of the Bay Bridge and how it immediately developer those foundation leaks, cracked welds, failed bolts, etc: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_span_replacement_of_th...

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

#130

Post by [deleted] »

kiba wrote: post #87
thev4lley wrote: post #60

I don't think most people appreciate the level of regulation that ensures safety and quality of life in Western countries. Go to many countries outside of that spectrum and you may still see beautiful architecture and more. Now did the team that worked on that project have the necessary experience to drive a safe and long lasting solution? Does the concrete and steel used follow good standards? This means that it may…

And yet the construction here in the US have reputation of doing shoddy works, not doing work on time, and being more expensive than they should be, while skirting any regulations any way they can. Or at least that's my impression.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN