Phaze

Surprised this hasn't been posted yet.

"Friday, Singapore Airlines flight SQ16 to San Francisco was forced to make an emergency stop during takeoff when the controller told the pilots that Korean Air flight KE929 (Airbus A330-200) to St Petersburg (Russia) was crossing the runway without permission."

Wasn't in the slightest bit surprised when I read where the other carrier was from.

s0ssos

Actually it is surprising. Because they are supposedly ones who follow rules rigidly. By culture.

RTWFF

Perhaps you've forgotten the incident at Taipei some years ago where an SQ flight turned in the wrong direction on a take-off runway, revved its engines up and ploughed straight into the construction equipment, resulting in an aircraft fire and loss of life

YuropFlyer

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singap...nes_Flight_006

That's 15 years ago, not "some years"..

Yes, SQ isn't perfect, they had their fair share of accidents.

BUT.. if it's down to which cockpit crew I would prefer to fly with, everything else equal, I'd definitely go with SQ over any Korean (or japanese, for that matter) carrier. Their culture mentality (don't correct the superior, even if he's wrong) had caused way too many problems.

FlyerEC

Oh yes , the Koreans . They do have their cultural / gender bias .

Thankful , no casualties but lots of inconvenience / disruption for crew & of course , passengers .

Was just on SQ2 last Saturday .
Both sectors fine but hmm , SFO .. Oh well .

We shall see about TSA , dreading it , the next flights in the weeks to come .

Safe flying all .

kazuwox

I found the news from a different source... terrible Korean airline
http://loyaltylobby.com/2016/05/09/s...n/?omhide=true

kazuwox

Woops, the original source was the same - when I clicked the link I noticed it..

TheBOSman

http://avherald.com/h?article=497f7b0f&opt=0

GwailoSIN

I wonder if the pilot(s) will be punished. This was a very very serious incident and should not be taken lightly by Korean Air and the regulators. If the SQ pilot(s) wouldn't have acted, we would probably have seen mass casualties.

YuropFlyer

Considering we're talking about Korean Air, I doubt anything will happen unless it goes viral in their domestic media (which I doubt it will - we all know how their system works)

According to one comment from AVHerald:

"I agree with the other passenger that the Korean airport ground staff was not overly courteous or prepared for the emergency situation. I think there is also a lack of empathy in dealing with the passenger and they focused more on I'm not sure what.

At the end of the day, they did figure out a plan, albeit it took them 7-9 hours and they did neglect care for the older passengers, passengers with kids, and pregnant women.

When we first got off the plane after waiting for 2 hours, the Korean airport staff was more interested in segregating the passengers into classes (business first and economy) rather than apologizing or making it clear what is the next steps.

Throughout the ordeal, passengers had to rely on each other to figure out which gate to go or which bus to go to because there was no staff helping at each point sometimes, the organization was poor, communication was poor, and empathy was severely lacking. "

That's really bad.. first, their airline almost creates a major disaster, and then they're offering a terrible performance at recovery.

KACommuter

Sounds like the pot calling the kettle black.

KACommuter

You seem to be forgetting that it was "their" control tower which noticed the KE flight wandering where it shouldn't have and ordered the SQ flight to stop/abort take off.

As for "their" terrible performance at recovery, my experience is that cultures which are rules driven are generally poor at handling situations not covered in the rule book. Both airlines involved here belong in that group.

s0ssos

I don't think "their" is referring to the same thing. Pilot culture at Korean airlines and ATC are two different things.

When you say your "experience", can you say what culture is not driven by rules? Like, cultures in Africa? So they would be better? All first-world countries have rule books, and they mostly follow them. In fact, that is what made flights so safe, the fact people have checklists.

KACommuter

The original post's "their" clearly refers to Korea in general.

"That's really bad.. first, their airline almost creates a major disaster, and then they're offering a terrible performance at recovery."

KACommuter

Fair enough. I am referring to the cultures at the extreme end of having rules for everything, where there is generally little flexibility and a mentality of "follow procedures". This tends to produce a mindset "if I follow the rules no one can blame me".

In such an environment, unless there is a specific SOP for "aircraft has to return to terminal due to blown tyres whilst taking of" the likelihood of a good response is very low.