Atlas Air Flight 3591

[Colonel]

Been talking to some people.  What a cluster.

I know the Elites like weak pilots in the cockpit, but ...

Colgan 3407, all over again.

I remember, years ago, saying it was a really bad idea to schedule two
weak pilots together.  Rockie told me I was a fucking idiot.

On the subject of big government types ... this must have been a bad
week for them.  The charges against General Norman dropped, and
Conrad Black got pardoned.

[Slick Goodlin]

I must not have been paying enough attention.  What happened?

[Colonel]

[quote]... pitched nose down ... to about 49° in response to column input[/quote]

and Vice-Adm Norman had the charges dropped against him, because after
two years, the government noticed there wasn't enough evidence to convict
him, and oh yeah, they didn't want the bad PR during an election.  Remember,
there is no political influence in Canada, which is why the Minister of Justice resigned.

and Conrad Black was pardoned by President Trump, both of whom Canadians
hate more than anyone else in the world, which is kind of funny, because Trump
gets Canadians pipelines and he broke the Canadian Dairy cartel.  In his spare
time, Trump does more for Canada than it's Prime Minister, who I understand is
spending his time trying to rename Manitoba to Peopletobia.

As I said, a bad week for big government types.

[Colonel]

[quote]From September 2015 to September 2017, the percentage of pilots employed by Atlas with [u]less than three years of experience[/u] increased from 36 percent to [u]51 percent of all its pilots[/u]

A plane, the pilot warned, was going to crash.

Experience at Atlas Air had become so insufficient that a catastrophe seemed unavoidable, he told company executives at Atlas’s 2017 annual meeting in Miami.

“There’s a certain level where when the experience goes down and the challenges keep rising that we’re going to have more close calls. And they might not all end as well as they have. And that has to be addressed,” the captain told Chief Executive Officer William Flynn and Chief Operating Officer John Dietrich, according to a recording of the meeting obtained by the Miami Herald.[/quote]

Low-time pilots think the "pilot shortage" is great.  The rest of us think it's a goddamned catastrophe.

[Eric Janson]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_Air_Flight_3591

Hard to believe this could happen.

Sign of the times unfortunately - only going to get worse imho.

[vanNostrum]

The Captain was 60 years old with 11.000 hrs