The Lemon Fool

In the unlikely event of my ever wanting to go to Pakistan I certainly won't be flying Pakistan International Airlines.

This report is the latest in a catalogue of disasters, landing (or more accurately attempting to land) an A320 havimg forgotten to lower the undercarriage - https://www.flightglobal.com/safety/pia ... 79.article

PIA has form for this type of thing - https://www.businessinsider.com/pakista ... ?r=US&IR=T

Then last week I read that hundreds of Pakistani pilots are flying with fake licences, having bought them from corrupt officials - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-53182750

It would be interesting to see if there's any correlation between airline safety and corruption. I would expect that there is, as if officials are corrupt then airline safety must be a very tempting source of income ...

This:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uA5PF3JMHdo

the plane was far too high for the landing, so even aside from the landing gear issue, the glide path was all wrong.

The preliminary report makes for interesting reading. There is a download link to it on this page...

https://aeronewsglobal.com/pk8303-crash ... published/

It's just about impossible to imagine a worse series of decisions in any aviation disaster.

Much too high and much too fast from many miles out, hints of cockpit irregularities (visitors on flightdeck?), no proper crew management, and several missed opportunities (offered, and as near as dammit ordered) by Air Traffic Control to abandon the descent as it was too fast by almost a factor of two and too high by a larger margin.

A fair bet the pilot thought he could land safely, the co-pilot thought the pilot had decided on a Go Around, and hence raised the undercarriage.

And the icing on the cake, after touching down on the engines and applying reverse thrust to slow down, they decided it was a good idea to go around. Gearboxes, pumps, oil lines etc all reside under the engine, so their fate was sealed the second they tried to take off again.

All very sad and so avoidable.

Why no mention in the articles highlighted of the supposed fact that 30% of PIA pilots were operating with fake licences although maybe not in this case?

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/25/busi ... index.html

Mike88 wrote:Why no mention in the articles highlighted of the supposed fact that 30% of PIA pilots were operating with fake licences although maybe not in this case?

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/25/busi ... index.html

Ck mentioned it in his original post, fourth paragraph.

staffordian wrote:

Mike88 wrote:Why no mention in the articles highlighted of the supposed fact that 30% of PIA pilots were operating with fake licences although maybe not in this case?

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/25/busi ... index.html

Ck mentioned it in his original post, fourth paragraph.

Doh! Apologies.

I enjoyed living and working in South Asia for over 7 years. In my job I came across many instances of corruption that were similar to experiences in the Philippines and Malaysia which varied only in degree. However, more fascinating for me was the frequency of much less serious cheating of the system. In some cases there was no obvious advantage in doing so. It seemed that it was done sometimes only because it was possible. So saying, my experience may have been atypical but I don't really know.

I wonder if another phenomenon, I noticed while working in Romania was in any way related. Any public sign exhorting people not to do something seemed to actually encourage some to do it for no obvious reason.

TP2.

I wa salways told that PIA = Panic In the Air.

My brother told me - never ever fly with them

Clitheroekid wrote:It would be interesting to see if there's any correlation between airline safety and corruption. I would expect that there is, as if officials are corrupt then airline safety must be a very tempting source of income ...

Yes, there definitely is. Though probably more to do with bribing maintenance inspectors than pilots. Many of the CIS states airlines are renowned for using spare parts sourced from the local tractor factory. Which are much cheaper than genuine aircraft spares. Oh, but occasionally they fall to bits.

Gryff