Topic: Huge gust of wind blamed for Indonesian plane crash - pilots

The Australian Federal Police Commissioner says the pilots of a plane that crashed in Indonesia on Wednesday are blaming a huge gust of wind for the incident.

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Scuse the French, but as a pilot ... Crap.

They came in hot perhaps because they were uncertain of wind gusts, but it also has a lot to do with dropping levels of pilot competency.

At Wellington pilots are plagued by high winds and that is where I have done a lot of my flying. I have also seen airline pilots from other countries (and USAF C-130 pilots) unable to cope with wellington conditions due to inexperience.

Worldwide and especially in Asian countries there is a push driven by national pride to get westerners out of the cockpits of their national airlines and replace them with Asian nationals. Unfortunately these guys are often just young rich brats, with wealthy mummies and daddies. They go to flight schools in USA or NZ, Australia etc and attend pressure cooker flying courses to get commercial flying licence and what are called frozen ATPLs (Airline Transport Pilot Licences). Then they go home and work as co pilots on these new national airlines.

Often these guys have never flown recreationally, never handled say small topdressers, or scenic aircraft in challenging, character building situations. Thus apart from flight school all they know is the airliner they have become a pilot in and flying from A to B at big airports with big runways.

They compensate for lack of experience and skills by keeping speed up on approach and landing faster than necessary. Speed you see gives a safety margin on approach, but at touchdown too much speed then becomes a liability.

These Garuda pilots should have aborted the landing if touchdown was too far into the runway, but again you need experience to develop the judgement to say this is not working.

That experience is why airline pilots are paid big bucks but all too often now airline pilots don't have the skills to back their salaries.