Not to worry about who's in charge in the secured cockpit of the next Air India Express 737 flight you're on. Why, it's a 25-year-old, reportedly inadequately trained co-pilot, panicking the jet into a spectacular 7,000 foot dive while the passengers were eating their dinner and the pilot was outside the cockpit on a bathroom break, reports CNN, which adds:
"The aviation agency report [in India] concluded that the 25-year-old co-pilot had not been trained in the specific scenario the jet encountered and 'probably had no clue to tackle this kind of emergency.'"
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By JOE SHARKEY
Yes, but can we be certain that the co-pilot was subjected to a full body scan or an enhanced pat-down before boarding the plane? Surely that would have weeded out incompetence.
ReplyDeleteAccording to one story, when the PIC returned to the cockpit, he was pulling on the yoke against a *PUSHING* force exerted by the copilot!
ReplyDeleteMethinks there's something more to this story than the simple explanation of a "confused" copilot. That boy had quite a bit of flight time- there is NO WAY he would have confused pushing versus pulling on the yoke.
I smell EgyptAir all over again.
Just sayin'. At least it worked out better *this* time.