Originally Posted by
guyinmotion
I also fly this route several times a year - have one coming up in December (DL) and another one in January (OZ) - and I have no intention of changing airlines. I will just follow my usual routine: pop a pill and go to sleep.
No offense, but that is about the dumbest thing you can do on any airline next to getting drunk. You never know when a diversion or emergency landing will be needed - either due to equipment or just a fellow passenger having a medical issue. It is not fun trying to manage stairs (possibly in the middle of the night in inclement weather) with hand luggage. Trust me I have done it after a long flight.
Certainly you have every right to fly Asiana and your odds are pretty good. But sleeping pills - no way.
Originally Posted by
relangford
Let's wait until ALL the facts are in. Also, remember that the pilots are being questioned (and answering) in English. Not their native language. The Korean language has many complexities (including answering "yes" when it is not raining, when asked "Is is not raining?") and what an American would think was despondent when using the Korean expression "some (people) die". I fly OZ regularly and have found a number of the OZ pilots to be Australians or Americans, so the broad stroke of "Korean culture" may be overly simplistic. As to banning OZ, this is the FIRST OZ crash on U.S. soil with thousands of OZ flights to/from the U.S.
Spare me the excuses and your anecdotal experience with a few pilots.
If you read Gladwell's Outliers there is an interesting chapter on Korean airline safety incidents (which were quite frequent in the 80s and 90s) and the steps that were taken (successful at the time) to reduce the horrendous accident rate.
All of the fact thus far developed - both in the public record as well as off the record reports posted by pilots who have conducted training in Korea - point to a resumption of the cultural and training issues that plagued KAL and Asian in late 20th Century. Not a shocker - cultural norms are difficult to change and it is easy to regress in one sector when changes were not made in the society as a whole.
It is for this reason that I will not fly on a Korean owned carrier until changes to training and procedures are once again implemented. I am sure the risks are relatively small but they are still much greater than flying a carrier with properly trained pilots.
Those who do not study history are condemned to repeat it.