> YA-KME for example, has a strange little thing where you’ll get an ECAM Red ENG 3 FIRE after you detent into CLB. For f*ck sake, don’t discharge the bottles, there’s no fire. It’ll shut up after 3 or 4 seconds. Again, reason unknown, everybody just kind of lives with it’s quirks now. KME is commonly referred too as “Kill Me”, as this is the aircraft with the most random issues. Brake temps breaking the charts when you start up from cold and dark in DXB for example. You’ll get used to them, and you’ll get used to which ones are “KME Normal” and KME actually trying to kill you.
I remember reading report from another captain, flying for Kam Air or some other Afghan airline about a decade ago. I recall his hotel got attacked by Taliban suicide bombers, but other than that the contract went fine. I guess things are calmer now out there.
> somehow Kam Air can keep all of their APUs operating but European carriers I've flown with will go the entire Summer season hopping about the Greek Islands with it INOP
If anyone knows: is it normal to allow dispatch without the APU? I kind of assumed it would be a required redundancy, especially on an airbus where the computers and electronics are what keeps the thing in the air ...
The APU is not on during flight, so not a safety thing. It's just for providing power (and bleed air) on the ground (if there's no other power source). E.g. can't start up at airports without external power with the APU INOP.
APUs have a common mode failure with main engines: lack of fuel. Are there designs out there which require emergency power after engine failure and don’t have a RAT?
There was a Mentour Pilot video on the Jeju Air crash that touched upon this. With a dual engine failure on a 737, you lose both generators and fall back to the emergency batteries (no RAT). The aircraft remains flyable, but it's extremely challenging - you need an operational APU to make things a lot more manageable: https://youtu.be/9GbmGUk8Y0M?t=2001
I'm sure the usual suspects are pounding away at their keyboards with condemnation but after reading that but I think that's a pretty gloving review, all things considered.
> Like many airlines, Yemenia use one of the major rostering apps, and rosters release 15 days before the end of the month. Even despite the rocket attacks, car bombs, mortars, and intermittent electricity and wifi, they do still manage to get the roster out on time, which is more than I can say for the few European carriers I worked for.
Last time I was backpacking in India and wanted to go to Kashmir (2008), violence just flared up badly after long period of peace and was outright told not to head up north from Amritsar. I've read few articles how tourists in Srinagar (our goal) were all gathered by army in barracks and flown away.
Makes sense from Indian army point of view. I wouldn't expect its easy to even get there, especially if westerner, we stick out of crowd properly even when skin tone may be similar, clothing is obviously very different. There is a reason why those prices are so low. Maybe nothing happens, maybe something does. Flying is probably safest, if one ignores the possibility of ground-air or air-air missiles, intentional or not.
Great read! I'm a bit surprised the author (and others?) didn't get a bro-level warning from others who'd done this. Oops; hindsight is 50/50. I suppose this post is just that, and I bet no one else will walk into this with expectations otherwise! Granted, rapidly-changing field with the war...
Doubt Arabs in Tunisia or Iraq do this? You probably meant the Kafala ("visa sponsorship"), usually abused by businesses (illegally so, in Bahrain and the UAE) employing blue-collar workers in ~4 GCC ("Arab") states.
There's a huge difference in potential blowback between mistreating some poor bastard from Pakistan who signed on as unskilled labor and a trained airline pilot from a Western country.
Edit: And how in God's name are you going to extort the passport from someone whose literal job is to fly an airplane to other countries, where they not only need it to do their job, but can just land somewhere and be like "peace out, I quit, I'm not flying this thing back."
>Pleased with himself, he asks you how he did and is disappointed when you tell him that he didn’t actually land the aircraft, some French computer engineer did.
A highlight:
> YA-KME for example, has a strange little thing where you’ll get an ECAM Red ENG 3 FIRE after you detent into CLB. For f*ck sake, don’t discharge the bottles, there’s no fire. It’ll shut up after 3 or 4 seconds. Again, reason unknown, everybody just kind of lives with it’s quirks now. KME is commonly referred too as “Kill Me”, as this is the aircraft with the most random issues. Brake temps breaking the charts when you start up from cold and dark in DXB for example. You’ll get used to them, and you’ll get used to which ones are “KME Normal” and KME actually trying to kill you.