pelmet wrote: ↑Sat Feb 10, 2018 2:59 am
Maybe, their hiring policies need review. It is very nice to require a degree in any subject even though it has nothing to do with aviation but that won't teach you how to prevent a CFIT. Nice questions about getting along with cabin crew feel good and can have a place but perhaps some interview questions such as....Tell me about what you do to ensure terrain clearance at busy and not so busy airports, what would you do if a generator light illuminated 15 knots below V1, how do you go about preventing yourself from landing at the wrong airport or wrong runway on a visual approach. Are you familiar with this particular well-known incident(example given) and what is the lesson you have learned from it.
Seeing as they don't even do a sim eval, at least getting an idea of whether someone takes extra time to go beyond reading the minimum required info can be useful.
Pelmet,
I am not an Air Canada guy so I don't have anyone I need to defend but what you are saying is B.S. and makes it sound like you have a chip on your shoulder. Having an instrument rating and instrument experience SHOULD teach you something about situational awareness vis-a-vis minimum IFR altitudes but how many guys have plowed into the side of mountains or trees who didn't have a degree? The issue here is training, a suitable aerodrome briefing from the operator of the particularities and hazards of an aerodrome, as well as an SMS program and safety culture that encourages hazard reporting and information sharing. Any pilot can screw something up really badly. I have known of very well qualified pilots who have landed at the wrong airport, and look at the Eastern guys who flew a perfectly serviceable airplane into the Everglades. One of KLM's Sky Gods plowed his 747 into another 747, and let's not even talk about the carnage in the Canadian bush.
These days most recurrent training sessions are so fixated on SOP's, aircraft system malfunctions, TCAS, EGPWS and windshear recoveries that basic IFR and airmanship atrophy. I don't blame the pilots for this loss, although yes, anybody who does hold an Instrument Rating
should know better.
However, I have seen this topic come up a number of times about flying in Latin America and, in particular, Mexico, and it can catch out aviators who are more familiar with flying in radar environments. Like
FICU I was once given an off airway "Direct To" clearance by a controller in Costa Rica whilst out of radar contact. A quick check of my chart indicated that there was a mountain ridge separating where we were and where we wanted to go at our altitude and I told the Captain that we needed a climb clearance for this to work out. Anybody remember the American Airlines 757 going into Cali? Around Mexico City, ATC has given traffic "descend and cleared direct to" clearances right into the side of volcanos (in the good old pre-GPWS days) and one now defunct airline would include such scenarios into their training programs (and on the simulator building wall, most pilots could read their names of amongst those who had "died" in the simulator). Fortunately, they had EGPWS and acted appropriately - EXACTLY AS TRAINED. Happy ending. Everyone survived. There will be an investigation. We will learn from this. And hopefully the lessons will help the aviation system improve.
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