This article goes on and on, but the heart of it is in this paragraph:
A May 2023 FAA letter, which Walsh published, allowed 21 Air to substitute its own check airman for an FAA inspector on at least one takeoff-and-landing leg of initial or upgrade training. Honor system. The same federal instinct that let Boeing grade its own homework.
It gave me a flashback to my days in industry. ISO 2001 certification was handled by a company that AMAT paid.
Wink, wink, nod, nod.
Not a lot of answers, but it looks like they tried to go around way too late. More or less a brand new Captain to the 767 and a low time FO. Not at all unusual, at least where I work. NTSB alluded to it at the end that there is at least chatter that 21 Air management might be a factor. A simple “no fault” go-around policy should have prevented this.
21 Air has an in house pilot union much like Southwest. I was never a big fan of unions, but they are effective at taking safety decisions away from the bean counters and placing them in the hands of the operators. I think we can all point a command in our military careers where raising safety issues wasn’t exactly career enhancing. Now imagine being potentially fired for following SOP at the expense of a bottom line. No evidence that is the case here, yet. It’s a small world and the streets appear to be talking, though. Clearly this was a case of horrible judgment, but I wonder if there were cultural reasons at the company that led to it. Occam’s razor remains sharp.
Go-a rounds are rare, but they happen. My company is the butt of a lot of jokes (many deserved), but we are the industry leaders in stabilized approaches, for whatever that’s worth. I know a few people who got phone calls from the chief pilot for landing unstable approaches well inside whatever they pushed here. Those approaches landings were complete non-events outside of the FOQUA data. Conversely, I’ve had to do a couple go-arounds for various reasons, usually traffic related. Never heard a word about it. Clearly they got behind somehow and pushed ahead until it was too late.
_______________________________________________ Helobubbas mailing list -- helobubbas@helobubbas.com To unsubscribe send an email to helobubbas-leave@helobubbas.com