Originally Posted by Astro14
Originally Posted by nthach
Originally Posted by fdcg27
There aren't enough pilots who won their wings though either their militaries or by flying freight of one kind or another in crap aircraft in difficult conditions to man the world's narrow body fleet.
The military guys either get good or they get washed out while the civie freight dogs either get good or they get dead.
But was it just that (hiring via the military) practice the reason why Korean Air and China Airlines had bad safety record from the 1980s-early 2000s?
Not saying that military pilots are bad, but how a civil vs. military air crew(more so on a fighter) communicates and operate in the office dramatically different?
You're way off base in your understanding of this. Military pilots, fighter pilots in particular, excel at communication. They have to. They have seconds to convey life/death information, where every other pilot has minutes to convey important information.
The crashes at Korean Air and China Airlines had nothing to do with military pilots or their training, and everything to do with hierarchical society and a cockpit culture that reinforced the hierarchy, to the utter detriment of the crew's ability to point out an error.
That cockpit culture and hierarchy continues to exist within some carriers.
Asiana 214, a perfectly operating 777, hit the sea wall in SFO because no one wanted to tell the captain that he was making an error.
That's hierarchy for you.
NOTHING to do with military training or experience.
Military pilots get hired easily at major airlines, and the application/interview process weeds out the autocrats, the training and a modern, CRM approach re-train the rest into effective crew members.
But that process is lacking outside of Europe and North America.
Two of my friends died bcs. of lack of communication. One in UTVA 75 when four "full birds" were going to HQ and no one wanted to tell pilot that he is doing turn wrong, thinking he knows. They slammed into mountain above Zadar in Croatia.
Another friend, died in MIG-21 in Romania. He was their most promising officer. Flew F16, EF2000, anything Romania wanted to potentially buy, he would tried it. He was at AWC with me. Went back, needed to get back into routine, got into plane with LTC (he was colonel) and LTC did not feel compel to tell him what he was doing wrong. Both died.
There are issues across the board, it is human nature.