This is truly one of the most bizarre aviation incidents that I’ve ever seen, and it’s not clear to me if this was an honest mistake, or what…
Continue reading: Huh: Nigerian Pilots Suspended After Nearly Running Over Five People
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
Some may see the title of this article as racist because it says "Nigerian pilots". When there's a news story or accident, you don't usually see a reference to "American pilots" or other white countries.
A story might read "The KLM flight remained in Bangor because the pilots timed out", not "The KLM flight remained in Bangor because the Dutch pilots timed out."
Ben is good. This is likely unconscious implicit bias.
Calm down, I'm from naija and didn't think racism until you mentioned it. Don't over analyze this
derek,
Would you agree that other cultures can be far more explicitly biased in the way they refer to European/American white people? In Nigeria - "oyinbo". In Latin America - "gringo". In Hawaii - "haoli". And so on. Do these cultures get a pass a la soft bigotry of low expectations?
Currently a farang here in Phuket. It is what it is. Nigerian pilots are pilots from Nigeria. Nothing more, nothing less.
As a minority, I don't think it's implicit bias. It's ok to say "Nigerian" pilot in the title because it's not a well known airline (à la your KLM example). For US based readers, saying "United/Delta pilot" in the headlines is more descriptive than a generic "American/US" pilot. If a US pilot of an unknown airline (say a cargo pilot) got in trouble abroad, I'm sure Ben would title it, "American pilot arrested for xyz.."
The celebrity being one of the 5 people standing would explain the filming starting before the incident happened. It's also possible that the celebrity was blocking to try to get back on the plane and the pilot just got tired of this SOB. So..in a way, yes, the two incidents are related.
At ABJ, aircraft appear to be dumped at random rather than parked in neat rows, unlike elsewhere. Also, an absence of buses means that pax walk to and from parked aircraft. So, this incident comes as no great surprise.
I'm not sure what the pilots did wrong - assuming they couldn't see the people and had permission to taxi from ATC. I would imagine it is against policy to just stand in front of an "active" airplane, so maybe the investigation is a bit one-sided here?
The title is likely "Nigerian Pilots ..." instead of "ValueJet Pilots .." because we all know what Nigeria is but at least I haven't heard of ValueJet before.
Ben definitely has an unconscious bias. Go through titles for old posts and see where he uses the nationality of and individual versus other ways to refer to someone.
Oonga boongas gonna oonga boonga ! Just like Pierre Cedric-Bonin on Air France 447.