Breaking: Emirates 777 Crash Lands At Dubai Airport

@Chandan

My post should have been clearer--the takeaway is those automation dependent pilots applying for SAA never got hired. They were afraid of hand flying, and went on to get jobs somewhere else (many in the UAE where hand flying became optional if the pilots balked on the exam).

From his first hand report, it sounded like SAA was much safer than the UAE carriers. He was allowed to hand fly at will, and did so on at least 1/4 of his flights. He took me on a ride-along in the cockpit, and I jokingly asked to see the MEL log. He told me that in two years of flying he had seen at most 2-3 MEL items per YEAR with SAA. I couldn't believe him and he had a couple others back him up. He said safety and maintenance was taken more seriously here than anywhere he had heard of.

Compare that to North American carriers, who like to stretch out MEL items for close to as many cycles legally, and get them to their preferred maintenance stations, allowed before reparing them. I don't have a 737 MEL list, but I believe you can run without fuel gauges (look up Air Canada Gimli Glider to see how THAT worked out for them), without a functional APU (also some other crashes have occurred as a result), without one of the hydraulic systems, without one of two Cabin Air handlers, etc.

Also, here is another good indicator of safety: In the US you need 1500 minimum flying hours in order to even become a copilot (and that's for a regional carrier). The major airlines typically won't hire without 3000-5000 hours. BUT if you move to the UAE or China, you can get that job with 500 hours of flying.

Incredible that people paying $8k on a first class ticket might get a copilot with only 500 hours (12 x 40hr weeks) of flying, with much of that time on single engine cessnas.

Of course the UAE carriers are still better than the Chines. In China, the copilots are apprentices. They are hired without flight experience,cannot understand or speak English, and are simply in the seats to assist the pilots with their workload, emptying their ashtrays, etc.

You can have safe flying or luxurious flying, but not both.

From another forum, this is the kind of thing that happens when pilots from other cultures are afraid to "hand fly any approach, even in perfect weather."

They are trained to avoid hand flying at all costs, and if Autopilot cannot be used they routinely insist on a go around (where US/Britsh carriers routinely hand fly the aircraft to an ultra smooth landing) .

Carriers in the UAE and other parts of the world recruit their pilots with a generous yearly, tax free, compensation via contract. In a simulator check, if the pilots are asked to hand fly, there are numerous reports that they refuse, demand the instructor shuts off the simulstor, and walk off the traning. Then, the pilots get called back in, with the airline pleading with them to complete the test with a "new instructor".

Once they do get hired, Emirates & FlyDubai use data logger deviced to try to catch their pilots making mistakes. A pilot gets large pay deductions (a months salary maybe!) without any recourse, if they turn off automation and make 'any deviation'. They are fined on trivial items that happen when hand flying an approach: being at 1960 or 2040 feet for a few seconds longer than an autopilot that gets you to exactly 2000.00 feet, etc.

A pilot that we became friends with affirmed his frustration with the above process. He started his onboarding/training at South African Airways with a group of 300 pilots. The simulator trainings were going great, and they were told the next day would be hand flying testing. Suddenly, the next day, there were only 20 pilots remaining in the program.

@Richard Anderson: some pretty bold and wild assumptions by you there? You say "I'll reserve judgement on this until more facts are known" but then you go on to make some pretty big judgements! How do you know that there wasn't a landing gear issue or some other major issue? How do you know that the pilots were not experienced? Maybe in this case, these pilots did a fantastic job and in fact saved 300 lives through their experience and expertise. I could be wrong, but I could also be right, and I will reserve judgement for now due to the lack of information. Emirates is one of the top 5 airlines in the world and attracts some of the best pilots from around the world. The US airlines don't make the top 50 in the world. Don't be so quick to judge, and in fact, don't be arrogant by intimating that if you are not a "US" pilot, you are not up to scratch to fly a 777 or A380. The US is no longer at the top anymore, get over it.

Does sound a lot like OZ 214 ... in other words inexperienced pilots operating heavy aircraft. I'll reserve judgement on this until more facts are known, but foreign governments are going to have to figure out the processes by which somebody can come to pilot an aircraft with 300+ people on board with so little experience. I know not everybody has the USAF as a government sponsored aeronautical training plan, but these guys driving 777s and even 380s would have a hard time getting a job flying mainline aircraft at all in the US. Experience matters!