Comment by dobbsbob | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dobbsbob | Hacker News Reader

Korean/asiana airlines pilots were banned for 12 mos by the airport authority where i worked over a decade ago pending pilot training and english review due to numerous incidents of pilot error and communications problems. Those two airlines managed to ram the jetway 3 times, and even rammed the maint hanger causing millions in damage. One pilot tried to take off with the fuel truck still attached, one pilot had poor english ordering fuel be halfed instead of extra fuel and had to fly back because the pilot only noticed 1hr after takeoff, and two (yes, two) Korean reg'd AC tried to land on the highway instead of the runway.

Another Korean air flight misunderstood the tower and tried to land at the same time as an another plane almost causing a crash, which was only noticed by the other pilot who got out of there. I was there when they asked the pilot about it who was completely clueless he had almost killed everybody on both flights.

I dont know whats up with Korean pilot training but talk to anybody who has worked in a tower and they will tell you horror stories. Theres also the 911 incident where they broadcasted a hijack code for some reason and were almost shot down over the Yukon.

I lived in South Korea and I met some folks working at Berlitz there who apparently won the contract to do English language upgrades for Korean Air. It was soon after 9/11 and they said that after the first class they all looked at each other in silence. Finally one of them said, "Now that is why people thought they were hijacked." They said that 6 months later the difference was absolutely amazing, they were all great students with very few exceptions and all working under the threat of losing their jobs.

I worked with highly educated Koreans when I was there and what the OP says is true about using English words and phrases for highly-technical things I found little to no relationship between that use and a high level of English language competency. If you look at the quoted transcript you see that the item that is "off-script" is in Korean: "Captain: Glide scope 안 돼나? [Isn't glide scope working?]" while all the routine OK checks are in English, following training. For this reason I find elements of his arguments not much more convincing than Gladwell's. (That and the tendency of Korean airliners to drift into Soviet airspace he dismisses seems to support Gladwell's thesis more than his.)

I generally think the "culturalism" thing is a dangerous excuse to engage in a kind of casual racism, but I also think that dismissing culture as an element of any task where humans have to communicate and cooperate is also incorrect.

> That and the tendency of Korean airliners to drift into Soviet airspace he dismisses seems to support Gladwell's thesis more than his.

The tendency of Korean airliners to drift into Soviet airspace had much more to do with Korea's location on the globe than anything else.

South Korea was not the only country situated near the edge of the former USSR. It was, however, the only country (according to the WP article on shoot-downs) to have any commercial passenger jets shot down by the Soviets for entering Soviet airspace.

It's my understanding that Korean pilots did deservedly have a bad reputation in the late nineties, but got their act together and in 2008 came top of the ICAO league in aviation safety (including pilot training).

I thought they fixed all these problems too then SFO happens, which is yet another training mistake no other pilots would make even on a flight simulator.

See, now I really do think you're making it up.

A training mistake no other pilot would ever make, even in a simulator? Surely the whole point of putting a pilot under training in a simulator is because they will make mistakes, they're expected to make mistakes, learning from mistakes is a part of learning, and they're doing it in a simulator because they need to learn.

If we have a supply of pilots who don't make mistakes as they learn, why do we bother training them at all? Surely we can put these magic trainees straight into the cockpit.

I would question any flight school that not only doesn't care if you ignore standard protocols and checklists clearly spelling out what speed you should be going while landing, but also who's trainer disappears during the most crucial exercises such as landing a plane full of people.

It wasn't just one pilot's error, we have 2 pilots that ignored protocols.

If you want some more Korean pilot hijinx look up Korean Air Lines Flight 769 in 2007 that decided not to land on the runway and instead where they taxi planes. How do you make that mistake: giant landing strip, or tiny strip right beside it obviously not for landing. Hmm I'll land on the tiny strip

Landing a real airplane is a little more complicated than landing the one in the video game.

Citations needed.

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