He was a pilot (commercial pilot license), just not the correct type of pilot for long haul flights (airline transport pilot license), but he forged the license to say he was the second. Makes sense, it wasn’t just some rando flying planes, don’t it would have been 20 years otherwise.
Nowadays in the US, both pilots in the cockpit for your typical airline (part 121 airlines) are legally required to have an ATL. Prior to 2013, first officers weren't required to have an ATL in the US, and still aren't in many countries.
Depends on the country and time. In the United States you are currently required to have an ATP to work as a pilot on regularly scheduled flights. However this was not always the case, and the airlines have been trying to make it no longer the case.
Also because different countries have different requirements, airlines operating internationally will want to make sure their pilots flying into other countries meet the requirements of those other countries.
I was gonna say, as someone with their PPL, CPLs require so much freaking training that there’s no way some random guy off the street could just forge a license and start flying, the inexperienced flying would give you away.
Yeah my old man flew for Northwest Airlines in the '70s and '80s. They had a pilot like this apparently. Either the guy had no credentials or they had been expired for a very long time. But he was a decent enough pilot that it was never an issue, until it was an issue.
IIRC the pilot in question had been a crop duster with a Single Engine Commercial rating. He was hired as a Flight Engineer (which was normal), he then upgraded to First Officer and eventually Captain without ever taking the Multi Engine rating checkride. He had multiple FAA observations throughout his career, annual checkrides with his company, etc.
When the FAA system was computerized, a bunch of red flags went up on his certificate.
Would you rather trust someone that has done the same job successfully for 20 years that doesn't have their papers in order or someone that has passed all of the tests and it is their first time captaining?
Not only that, literally ZERO accidents or incidents?! Like even I have had flags before. Every pilot does. The fact that he never even so much as had a major weather incident cause problems says this dude DEFINITELY needs to be in the seat.
Not a pilot but I have an idea of how that system works. Small mistakes don't generally affect a career unless they are repeated. The FAA doesn't make a habit of taking people's wings for small errors. They also encourage people to come forward with mistakes so they can be fixed. As fixing it is more important then the perception they don't make mistakes. If you threaten people's livelihoods they don't come forward.
I was a Navy Nuke and we operate under similar conditions.
Then why not get the appropriate credential? While we all have people we would give the benefit of the doubt, the rules are in place for a reason. We are all capable of being fooled or being biased, which puts the public at risk .
In this particular case, this guy FORGED his airline transport pilot license in March 2019 after an investigation was opened due to a reported turbulence issue during an international flight in November 2018. So not only was he guilty of fraudulent behavior but his performance was called into question.
Judging whether people are competent and have passed the requirements for any job is often based on whether they “look the part” and in cases like this where public safety is an issue, holding people to the same standard regardless of who they know and how they look is important.
TBH, I would fire him for the forgery of his credentials alone even without the performance issue that was raised. If we like the guy, we can take him out for a beer but I’m not willing to say that what he did was OK. Just as you pilots here had to demonstrate your fitness to fly, so should all pilots, whether they “look the part” or not.
The less charitable interpretation of that (impossibly?) clean sheet would be that he and his colleagues have been quietly "skipping the paperwork" on such things for years.
You dont get to "skip the paperwork" if you have to do 3+ go arounds, or slide partially in the rain, or have a tug do something weird, or having an electrical malfunction, or any number of things that get witnessed and reported by others outside of the plane.
Exactly—the same thing that lead some to say they would trust that he knows how to fly since he has gotten away with it “without incident for 20 years” is exactly the mindset that looks the other way when there are mistakes made. The guy was finally discovered because his handling of a turbulence issue on an international flight led them to open an investigation on him.
It’s entirely likely that there were other incidents that went unreported. Nobody wants to threaten another person’s livelihood and yet that’s what puts us all at risk.
Not a pilot thing, but I have no certifications in my field. Not a secret or anything, just never got any. Yet I am one of the highest paid in my company for the position. People with certifications passed a tests they never incorporated anything they have learned. Then by the time they get to they forget most of it. I just dive in.
Does your work involve the risk of you or others getting seriously injured or killed if you make a mistake? If you have those kind of stakes I wouldn't want you doing the work no matter how good you are at it if you don't have the proper credentials.
Passed all the tests, because a major point of tests/training is to certify you are ready for the one in a million abnormal things that may never happen or only happen once in 20-30-40 years of a career where if you make the wrong complex action in response you crash the plane and kill 200 people.
There were pilots in Mexico who bribed their way into the job without the proper training and certification and did fine for years because everything went normal and standard and then one day they were approaching too close to another plane and got flipped because of wake turbulence and turned a recoverable incident into a crash with no survivors because doing the job "successfully" for years doesn't mean shit when you are not certified on your aircraft which includes non standard checks that are there to make sure you don't kill everyone the second something out of the ordinary routine takes place.
It’s a false comparison though because 99.99% of pilots aren’t first time pilots and followed the rules.
Sure they all were on one occasion, but nearly every single one after that point displayed a continuous ability to maintain certifications, do their due diligence, and prove they will go out of their way (even when it’s possible not to) to follow the rules that make flying safe.
I’m not worried about the guy’s ability. My concern would entirely be what else he’s happy to overlook.
No, you are supposed to root for the underdog always. This is Reddit. Pretend you want the self taught pilot. It’s a heartwarming story, I mean really, he’s a self-made man. He’s like an artist who didn’t go to art school.
Honestly? The guy that is certified to fly. Hands down, no question. I know he is qualified, I don’t know what else the other guy skimped on learning because he’s shown that he has no problem skirting the certifications. It’s not a job where someone dies if you screw up, depending on the plane hundreds could die. Proper certifications are a must.
There's a significant amount of training on "How to handle an emergency on this type of plane when the shit hits the fan in flight."
I'd really prefer my pilot had that, regardless of how many routine flights he'd flown.
There's a lot of aviation losses that involve the phrase "And then the pilot tried to do X to regain control of the plane instead of Y, which resulted in the plane crashing and everyone dying."
Definitely the first time pilot who actually knows what to do when things go wrong. I’m not worried about how well someone will do the minimum required when everything is going well. It’s the training for what to do during emergencies and disasters that’s more important. Someone who isn’t certified for larger aircraft may or may not be educated in the correct procedures for dealing with emergencies, even if they have lots of experience doing the basics.
There's an ex military fighter pilot on YouTube whose whole channel is going into deep detail on how plane crashes occurred. Most of them are bad mistakes/bad pilots who have all their paperwork. Some of them regularly fail checkrides and though circumstances keep being allowed to fly.
So yeah, 20 years, passes his tests and no problems, apparently? He knows how to fly.
If someone's actually a good pilot, why would they risk everything by not getting certified? I'd like the one that doesn't cut corners, please.
From what I understand, airline operations involve a lot of safety checklists and stuff like that, and the guy literally skipped the very first box on the list. That personality flaw is enough to disqualify them as far as I'm concerned.
And honestly even that's a legal progression in some parts of the world too. I'm an airline pilot and I don't have a multiengine cert because in my country the type rating training supercedes that since it covers everything that would be covered in a multiengine course. It's a more difficult transition going from single engined planes like Cessnas to an airliner but it's doable. But obviously over there it isn't and went through the cracks, but he was likely as competent as any other pilot he worked with despite not having the ME rating.
It's not merely the paperwork or the ability to do the job on a day to day basis. The certification process is designed to ensure pilots know what to do when something goes wrong. Knowing exactly what steps to take in the proper order immediately, and then how to execute unfamiliar checklists and fly the plane when it's not working right is what the certs demonstrate.
That sounds more like a legitimate mistake. He was a pilot, and learned the additional skills for piloting larger multi-engine planes.
A pilot should be responsible for paperwork, seeing as he's responsible for hundreds of lives, but I don't know how the red tape was handled decades ago.
What got him caught? I'll have to ask my dad the next time I talk to him. It'll be fun as we've just started talking again after a long time and I like hearing his flying stories.
It’s generally a good idea to make sure those who are responsible for operating metal tubes of people through the air at high speed are qualified and actually know what they’re doing. Also those operating metal tubes of people on the ground at speed. And metal boxes of people on the ground.
Anyone operating metal containers full of people at high speed, really.
Really depends on the country. In the US at least, it seems like you can wipe your ass with most states DL given how most people drive. Also the lack of requiring any retesting.
Its called liability and negligence. If something were to happen and authorities found out the pilot should not have been driving all hell would break loose.
True, but that might be to years of big standard flying with no training for the emergency scenarios. That's what I want my pilot to be trained on. That's the difference between gliding into the Hudson relatively gently and plowing in nose first killing everyone.
To be fair though, even if you skipped all of flight school (which I don't think this guy even did), after 20 years you'd remember just as much about niche engine failure protocols as someone who'd gone through the course - which is to say nothing, because it was 20 years ago.
It seems like most of these skills are taught/reinforced in refresher courses, which active pilots would still need to attend, even if they skipped learning it the first time.
Most of the flight training, especially for the IFR license and multiengine license, are how to deal with the issues that should never happen during normal flight operations but where you would likely crash if you did not know what to do. This "pilot" might have 20 years of experience but never once practiced an engine failure on takeoff or even read about the different procedures in a textbook or gone through them with a professional flight instructor. So that one day he is pilot in command with an engine failure on takeoff and stalls the plane killing everyone on board people will be looking into why he did not just push the stick forward like he was taught in flight school. And then they find out he never went to flight school.
This "pilot" might have 20 years of experience but never once practiced an engine failure on takeoff or even read about the different procedures in a textbook or gone through them with a professional flight instructor.
He absolutely had that training. You don't just get hired off the street and and thrown in a cockpit the next day. The airline has to actually train you too.
He was a pilot, he just didn’t technically meet the requirements when he was recruited by SAA. They then would have provided additional training for fly a specific airliner to their standard operating procedures. Plus recurrent training and checking every six months. So he would have practiced all the emergency situations just as much as an other airline pilot.
He was a commercial pilot, he just didn't have his ATP. He had his private/multi/IFR. The main requirement for ATP is 1500 hours, which he would have had after 20 years. Baffling that he never did his check ride
The article did not mention type ratings, so he may or may not have had his for the plane being operated
This could not be more wrong. In my airline career I had 65 check rides, and I assure you every fucking one of them had an engine failure on takeoff -- two, in fact. One before V1 and one at V1.
Not to mention that every type rating course was deeply focused on engine out procedures.
This guy lied in an interview and no doubt thought that he could fix it before class started. While his integrity is beyond questionable, there is zero reason to think that he was not as competent as any other pilot before he flew his last trip.
Flight school doesn't teach you how to fly an airliner. After he got hired, he would have been trained, then had 6 month or yearly check rides to confirm he still knows the emergency drills.
It's seriously nutty how many jobs will refuse to even interview you for a position because you're lacking the right degree even though you have 20 years if experience.
I definitely feel like in such a situation if it was just a screw up somewhere it would be reasonable allow him to test up to getting his full credentials.
I think the bigger problem with the pilot in OPs story isn't that his paperwork wasn't fully in order, it's that he had consciously falsified that paperwork from the get go, and actively taken steps to avoid having to get it reviewed. Turning down promotions where he would have had to resubmit it, for example.
There's a difference between someone benefiting from a screw up and being allowed to carry on having proven themself capable, and rewarding someone for actively defrauding the system, even if they proved they could do the job.
He needs the same credentials everyone else is expected to have. There are people who are fully credentialed who face more scrutiny daily than this guy did for 20 years. This is nothing to play with—especially when his performance during a difficult maneuver is what seems to have exposed him.
If you fly 20 years without a license and then discover you don’t have it, they might as well give it to you. With 20 years you could be a flight instructor.
Flight instructors are generally inexperienced pilots trying to build hours
What he lacked was an ATP license. The main requirement of which is 1500 flight hours. After 20 years, he definitely would have had the hours. No idea why he didn't do the check ride
It is fraud but why would they get to claw the money back? Termination is warranted and yeah, he's probably going to be barred from ever flying again, but trying to claw the money back seems greedy.
Yeah he did the work, licensed or not he did a job and was paid for it, you can punish him for lying but you can’t take back compensation for work done unless it was some sort of malpractice, like a failed surgery for instance, that seems crazy to try to take back money paid for successful flights executed.
In the article the finance minister was all but begging on his hands and knees for the airline to be shut down.
He was overridden by the President, who thinks everything is fine. To him it's just a "rebuilding" era.
Also, not sure why "Pilot" is in scare quotes, the dude had his CPL. He just didn't have the higher certification required to fly passengers, which has a yearly refresher requirement. It's not like a dude dressed up in a pilot costume, walked onto a plane, and made a career of it.
The fact there was a safety officer covering for him implies the Airline "looked the other way" until they themselves were caught, rather than him.
My "Why would they get to claw the money back" was in knowledge that the airline let chuckles fly on a lower cert for twenty years. It saved them a lot of money.
I understand why the people replying to me are confused.
I mean the pilot is at fault here and presumably was actively deceptive. The others were presumably just negligent.
Also what is this dumbass argument people love to pull to throw responsibility entirely away to other people. You know several sides can be at fault right?
“Oh I lied but its not my fault, its actually all your fault for not catching me” is a dumbass argument.
Specifically, my question was as to if there is shared culpability. The airline is trying to say it was him and one safety officer covering this up, but the dude cashed his checks for 20 years.
They're running off government subsidy and have no profit to speak of. Hell, they run a yearly deficit.
If you want to know how its possible that people can be so self-serving and callous, this is the reason.
This and everyone who upvoted that comment show how easily people rationalize doing bad things by pushing and diffusing the entirety of the blame to everyone else. Its how liars, cheaters, criminals justify to themselves.
I don't think safety was substantially affected. The main requirement He was missing was having 1500 flight hours. Commercial requires 250, so he has at least 250 when he started
The 1500 hour rule was implemented by the US congress after a crash involving 2 pilots with >1500 hours
An FO really doesn't need 1500 hours. There is not a substantial difference in safety and preparedness than if they had 500 hours
Most of their hours after 250 are going to be spent beating the pattern or flying in circles in a Cessna. It's not really relevant to commercial flying after a certain point
Imoortant edit: I just realized he would have been working well before the US implemented a 1500 hour requirement, meaning SA must have implemented it well before the US
I assumed SA implemented in response to US requirements (many countries follow US aviation regs closely), but that was an incorrect assumption
It seems he could have, at the time, been a qualified FO on a US airline (assuming he passed the check ride)
He received money via labor. He produced money for the corporation and they should pay him for it even if he got to make money for the company through fraud.
I’m not a lawyer, I can’t represent someone in a court of law. If I did under false pretenses I’d be stealing from my “client”. He would be completely right in asking for his money back. I couldn’t claim that I performed labor just because I spent time on the case.
A thief stealing your property can’t claim he performed labor and that his compensation was fair.
Putting time in isn’t the only requirement for compensation, doing so legally also matters
He must've capably performed the job to go undetected for 20 years until his error. Why then, should the airline that clearly failed to properly vet his license and is thus partially responsible be entitled to anything they paid him for that? That's not to say that the pilot should profit off his fraud, just that the airline shouldn't either.
if you got away with representing someone in a court of law and ended up winning their case, i think you’d be in a whole lot of trouble but i don’t think your client would have any right to ask for their money back. You got them off, what more could they possibly have expected to get out of that situation if they had an actual lawyer
Actually, yes, the client can choose not to pay even if the fake professional achieved the client's goals. (In your case. Win the court of law)
Unless the fake professional can show the license in question is purely economic (such as business license which is just a form of tax) that can be quickly remedied.
He was fully qualified to fly as a First Officer, he had a valid Commercial Pilots License. He didn’t have an Airline Pilots License which would have given him extra financial benefits at SAA.
He was still FO at the time. The article mixes upbterks a bit. He was never the captain, who is ultimately pilot in command of the flight, but that doesn't stop him from being the primary manipulator of controls
Pilot in command makes final decisions. Manipulator of controls is actually flying the plane. They may, or may not, be the same person (and can change during the flight)
He had all the training he needed, just not the hours for ATP. South Africa apparently, for the time, had very strict pilot requirements. In other countries, he would have been able to easily get his last certification
Licensed pilot didn't have the extra credentials for the routes he flew. Dude we a real airline pilot he just wasn't a long haul accredited pilot while flying long haul for decades, really making you question if the required credentials should even still be necessary.
There should be a statute of limitations for false degrees, like if you keep the act up for 10 years and you haven’t messed enough for your bosses question you, you can just keep the job
I think it's less an issue of competence and more of "we can't reward this behavior even if he's good at his job because then other people would try to do what he did"
So he was a pilot? He flew for 20 years without crashing. Sounds qualified to me. A piece of paper doesn't magically make someone competent, nor does it's absence make someone incompetent
Common law pilot
It's ok until he reverts to Alternate Law.
Your Airbus joke will go unappreciated here.
I chuckled lol
I did too
It’s a subset of bird law
European bird law or?
no, you gotta ask his favourite colour first
No African actually, specifically African swallow.
Apartheid era bird law was not governed by reason.
Airbus reference!
I understand this reference because of Air France 447
Heh.
Alternate law is better than manual law
Banger joke
Tbh more of a mechanical backup or abnormal attitude law kind of scenario.
He’s traveling, not flying. No license required for traveling.
I hate those people so much
De facto pilot
I WASN’T FLYING I WAS TRAVELING
Was that an episode of Boston Legal?
Hahahaha dude you made my day with this lol 😂
He was a pilot (commercial pilot license), just not the correct type of pilot for long haul flights (airline transport pilot license), but he forged the license to say he was the second. Makes sense, it wasn’t just some rando flying planes, don’t it would have been 20 years otherwise.
Sir, why does this say "pylot's license"?
What is the crime, enjoying a letter? A succulent letter?
You don’t need a ATP to be an FO on long haul.
I know zero things about flying laws in South Africa, that’s just the info on the article.
This guys a phony just like that pilot!
In Canada the big airlines require ATPL but that’s just for their AOC. For a ferry permit you don’t even a type rating on the AC to be right seat.
Nowadays in the US, both pilots in the cockpit for your typical airline (part 121 airlines) are legally required to have an ATL. Prior to 2013, first officers weren't required to have an ATL in the US, and still aren't in many countries.
Depends on the country and time. In the United States you are currently required to have an ATP to work as a pilot on regularly scheduled flights. However this was not always the case, and the airlines have been trying to make it no longer the case.
Also because different countries have different requirements, airlines operating internationally will want to make sure their pilots flying into other countries meet the requirements of those other countries.
Each country does things differently, but generally ATP is for carrying passengers on a commercial flight
I was gonna say, as someone with their PPL, CPLs require so much freaking training that there’s no way some random guy off the street could just forge a license and start flying, the inexperienced flying would give you away.
I mean, by that point he has 20 years experience, how much more credentials does he need?
Yeah my old man flew for Northwest Airlines in the '70s and '80s. They had a pilot like this apparently. Either the guy had no credentials or they had been expired for a very long time. But he was a decent enough pilot that it was never an issue, until it was an issue.
What was the issue?
Not the OP, but I am a pilot:
IIRC the pilot in question had been a crop duster with a Single Engine Commercial rating. He was hired as a Flight Engineer (which was normal), he then upgraded to First Officer and eventually Captain without ever taking the Multi Engine rating checkride. He had multiple FAA observations throughout his career, annual checkrides with his company, etc.
When the FAA system was computerized, a bunch of red flags went up on his certificate.
If the FAA did observations and he passed company checkrides, hes a pilot in my book
As long as he’s captaining someone else’s flight.
Would you rather trust someone that has done the same job successfully for 20 years that doesn't have their papers in order or someone that has passed all of the tests and it is their first time captaining?
Not only that, literally ZERO accidents or incidents?! Like even I have had flags before. Every pilot does. The fact that he never even so much as had a major weather incident cause problems says this dude DEFINITELY needs to be in the seat.
Always wondered does having small mistakes affect a pilots career? Is there a grading system
Not a pilot but I have an idea of how that system works. Small mistakes don't generally affect a career unless they are repeated. The FAA doesn't make a habit of taking people's wings for small errors. They also encourage people to come forward with mistakes so they can be fixed. As fixing it is more important then the perception they don't make mistakes. If you threaten people's livelihoods they don't come forward.
I was a Navy Nuke and we operate under similar conditions.
this comment coming from a pilot is fascinating
Share a cockpit with another pilot sometime. Youll see why this dude has to be legendarily good to have never been noticed.
Then why not get the appropriate credential? While we all have people we would give the benefit of the doubt, the rules are in place for a reason. We are all capable of being fooled or being biased, which puts the public at risk .
In this particular case, this guy FORGED his airline transport pilot license in March 2019 after an investigation was opened due to a reported turbulence issue during an international flight in November 2018. So not only was he guilty of fraudulent behavior but his performance was called into question.
Judging whether people are competent and have passed the requirements for any job is often based on whether they “look the part” and in cases like this where public safety is an issue, holding people to the same standard regardless of who they know and how they look is important.
TBH, I would fire him for the forgery of his credentials alone even without the performance issue that was raised. If we like the guy, we can take him out for a beer but I’m not willing to say that what he did was OK. Just as you pilots here had to demonstrate your fitness to fly, so should all pilots, whether they “look the part” or not.
Because applying for them would probably raise the red flags and get you fired.
Nah, that sounds like he wasn't reporting to hide himself.
The less charitable interpretation of that (impossibly?) clean sheet would be that he and his colleagues have been quietly "skipping the paperwork" on such things for years.
You dont get to "skip the paperwork" if you have to do 3+ go arounds, or slide partially in the rain, or have a tug do something weird, or having an electrical malfunction, or any number of things that get witnessed and reported by others outside of the plane.
Exactly—the same thing that lead some to say they would trust that he knows how to fly since he has gotten away with it “without incident for 20 years” is exactly the mindset that looks the other way when there are mistakes made. The guy was finally discovered because his handling of a turbulence issue on an international flight led them to open an investigation on him.
It’s entirely likely that there were other incidents that went unreported. Nobody wants to threaten another person’s livelihood and yet that’s what puts us all at risk.
Not a pilot thing, but I have no certifications in my field. Not a secret or anything, just never got any. Yet I am one of the highest paid in my company for the position. People with certifications passed a tests they never incorporated anything they have learned. Then by the time they get to they forget most of it. I just dive in.
Does your work involve the risk of you or others getting seriously injured or killed if you make a mistake? If you have those kind of stakes I wouldn't want you doing the work no matter how good you are at it if you don't have the proper credentials.
Passed all the tests, because a major point of tests/training is to certify you are ready for the one in a million abnormal things that may never happen or only happen once in 20-30-40 years of a career where if you make the wrong complex action in response you crash the plane and kill 200 people.
There were pilots in Mexico who bribed their way into the job without the proper training and certification and did fine for years because everything went normal and standard and then one day they were approaching too close to another plane and got flipped because of wake turbulence and turned a recoverable incident into a crash with no survivors because doing the job "successfully" for years doesn't mean shit when you are not certified on your aircraft which includes non standard checks that are there to make sure you don't kill everyone the second something out of the ordinary routine takes place.
I’d rather have free Wi-Fi and a comfy chair.
It’s a false comparison though because 99.99% of pilots aren’t first time pilots and followed the rules.
Sure they all were on one occasion, but nearly every single one after that point displayed a continuous ability to maintain certifications, do their due diligence, and prove they will go out of their way (even when it’s possible not to) to follow the rules that make flying safe.
I’m not worried about the guy’s ability. My concern would entirely be what else he’s happy to overlook.
Nailed it.
Uhhh I'll pick the certified pilot over the self taught one any day
No, you are supposed to root for the underdog always. This is Reddit. Pretend you want the self taught pilot. It’s a heartwarming story, I mean really, he’s a self-made man. He’s like an artist who didn’t go to art school.
Honestly? The guy that is certified to fly. Hands down, no question. I know he is qualified, I don’t know what else the other guy skimped on learning because he’s shown that he has no problem skirting the certifications. It’s not a job where someone dies if you screw up, depending on the plane hundreds could die. Proper certifications are a must.
There's a significant amount of training on "How to handle an emergency on this type of plane when the shit hits the fan in flight."
I'd really prefer my pilot had that, regardless of how many routine flights he'd flown.
There's a lot of aviation losses that involve the phrase "And then the pilot tried to do X to regain control of the plane instead of Y, which resulted in the plane crashing and everyone dying."
Definitely the first time pilot who actually knows what to do when things go wrong. I’m not worried about how well someone will do the minimum required when everything is going well. It’s the training for what to do during emergencies and disasters that’s more important. Someone who isn’t certified for larger aircraft may or may not be educated in the correct procedures for dealing with emergencies, even if they have lots of experience doing the basics.
Is it really either or though? Inherently ignoring regulations can be a red flag for other problems.
There's an ex military fighter pilot on YouTube whose whole channel is going into deep detail on how plane crashes occurred. Most of them are bad mistakes/bad pilots who have all their paperwork. Some of them regularly fail checkrides and though circumstances keep being allowed to fly.
So yeah, 20 years, passes his tests and no problems, apparently? He knows how to fly.
If someone's actually a good pilot, why would they risk everything by not getting certified? I'd like the one that doesn't cut corners, please.
From what I understand, airline operations involve a lot of safety checklists and stuff like that, and the guy literally skipped the very first box on the list. That personality flaw is enough to disqualify them as far as I'm concerned.
Who gets to decide when the rules can be fudged?
I can no longer hear the term "crop duster" without imagining a flight attendant tooting up the aisles, leaving silent but deadlies in their wake 🤢
I sometimes do it as a teacher in class and giggle silently as I watch the students blame each other for it.
All fun and games until you get a rogue loudy.
Thats only a problem if you care what a bunch of kids think about a normal body function.
Although being known as the Mr. Farty McFartinson for the rest of your career can get tough at times.
Or the fact that intentionally farting within 5 feet of another person is disgusting, weirdo behavior in the first place.
What the
Rofl
The hidden perks of the job, I do it too haha. Teachers are lying if they say they don’t let the kids blame farts on each other lmao.
Good. Those little shits deserve it.
Sometimes the farts are actually little shits too
The fuck
Bwahaha
Alright man LMAO.
Or that guy from Independence Day.
A few years ago I moved to a rural area with lots of farm land, I absolutely lost it when I saw my first crop duster and realized what it was.
I love a good cropdust in Lidl ;)
Yeah, feels like a paperwork problem. Hopefully they just let him do the check ride and get back to work.
And honestly even that's a legal progression in some parts of the world too. I'm an airline pilot and I don't have a multiengine cert because in my country the type rating training supercedes that since it covers everything that would be covered in a multiengine course. It's a more difficult transition going from single engined planes like Cessnas to an airliner but it's doable. But obviously over there it isn't and went through the cracks, but he was likely as competent as any other pilot he worked with despite not having the ME rating.
Username does not check out haha. Scoring bangers for the Milans/PSG/Sweden not enough for you?
He had a great redemption though when he was wingman to POTUS and flew an F-15 into the belly of an alien spaceship.
That exposes issues with the licensing system up until then, but doesn’t really present an issue with their ability to fly
Fire the computer. Dude's been doing just fine. I'll take the guy with 20 yrs experience over the 27 yr old with the right paperwork.
It's not merely the paperwork or the ability to do the job on a day to day basis. The certification process is designed to ensure pilots know what to do when something goes wrong. Knowing exactly what steps to take in the proper order immediately, and then how to execute unfamiliar checklists and fly the plane when it's not working right is what the certs demonstrate.
That sounds more like a legitimate mistake. He was a pilot, and learned the additional skills for piloting larger multi-engine planes.
A pilot should be responsible for paperwork, seeing as he's responsible for hundreds of lives, but I don't know how the red tape was handled decades ago.
Airlines are supposed to have licensed pilots, if the plane would crash with an pilot without credentials they would most likely be held responsible
Then credent him
Your dentist's name is Crentist?
Most likely?
What got him caught? I'll have to ask my dad the next time I talk to him. It'll be fun as we've just started talking again after a long time and I like hearing his flying stories.
According to another reply, the FAA updated their systems to be electronic, and his license got flagged.
I'm envisioned him going to talk to all the old pilots in charge and one of them knew something from the wars and vouched.
Like Harry Potter plot armor, might be an old ace.
Could be? My dad did three tours in Vietnam flying for the Navy and a lot of those guys back then really did know each other from the service.
Like George Zipp.
Win one for the zipper
If there’s a crash and it turns out the pilot was unlicensed good luck getting any insurer to pay out.
It’s generally a good idea to make sure those who are responsible for operating metal tubes of people through the air at high speed are qualified and actually know what they’re doing. Also those operating metal tubes of people on the ground at speed. And metal boxes of people on the ground.
Anyone operating metal containers full of people at high speed, really.
But guns should never require any kind of credentials or certifications... at least in the US.
And for a good reason! All those guns will protect us from turning into an authoritarian country!
Hey, wait a sec…
Imagine driving a car without a license. Its like that but its a complicated metal bird full of people.
This kind of sounds like a riff on the Naked Gun joke, but that's not important right now...
Airplane, not Naked Gun
Surely, you can’t be serious.
Don't call me Shirley.
Really depends on the country. In the US at least, it seems like you can wipe your ass with most states DL given how most people drive. Also the lack of requiring any retesting.
He had no credentials was the issue! Duh!
But why male models?
that's what you want, a "decent enough" pilot to take care of your flight
https://media.tenor.com/kZDMA8VXIBMAAAAM/hello-boys-im-back.gif
Its called liability and negligence. If something were to happen and authorities found out the pilot should not have been driving all hell would break loose.
When I get on a plane, the last thing I want to hear is that the pilot is "decent enough".
True, but that might be to years of big standard flying with no training for the emergency scenarios. That's what I want my pilot to be trained on. That's the difference between gliding into the Hudson relatively gently and plowing in nose first killing everyone.
To be fair though, even if you skipped all of flight school (which I don't think this guy even did), after 20 years you'd remember just as much about niche engine failure protocols as someone who'd gone through the course - which is to say nothing, because it was 20 years ago.
It seems like most of these skills are taught/reinforced in refresher courses, which active pilots would still need to attend, even if they skipped learning it the first time.
Most of the flight training, especially for the IFR license and multiengine license, are how to deal with the issues that should never happen during normal flight operations but where you would likely crash if you did not know what to do. This "pilot" might have 20 years of experience but never once practiced an engine failure on takeoff or even read about the different procedures in a textbook or gone through them with a professional flight instructor. So that one day he is pilot in command with an engine failure on takeoff and stalls the plane killing everyone on board people will be looking into why he did not just push the stick forward like he was taught in flight school. And then they find out he never went to flight school.
He absolutely had that training. You don't just get hired off the street and and thrown in a cockpit the next day. The airline has to actually train you too.
He was a pilot, he just didn’t technically meet the requirements when he was recruited by SAA. They then would have provided additional training for fly a specific airliner to their standard operating procedures. Plus recurrent training and checking every six months. So he would have practiced all the emergency situations just as much as an other airline pilot.
Sounds like you didn't read the article
He was a commercial pilot, he just didn't have his ATP. He had his private/multi/IFR. The main requirement for ATP is 1500 hours, which he would have had after 20 years. Baffling that he never did his check ride
The article did not mention type ratings, so he may or may not have had his for the plane being operated
This could not be more wrong. In my airline career I had 65 check rides, and I assure you every fucking one of them had an engine failure on takeoff -- two, in fact. One before V1 and one at V1.
Not to mention that every type rating course was deeply focused on engine out procedures.
This guy lied in an interview and no doubt thought that he could fix it before class started. While his integrity is beyond questionable, there is zero reason to think that he was not as competent as any other pilot before he flew his last trip.
Unlikely. He had certification to fly these planes, just not long haul.
Flight school doesn't teach you how to fly an airliner. After he got hired, he would have been trained, then had 6 month or yearly check rides to confirm he still knows the emergency drills.
It's seriously nutty how many jobs will refuse to even interview you for a position because you're lacking the right degree even though you have 20 years if experience.
I definitely feel like in such a situation if it was just a screw up somewhere it would be reasonable allow him to test up to getting his full credentials.
I think the bigger problem with the pilot in OPs story isn't that his paperwork wasn't fully in order, it's that he had consciously falsified that paperwork from the get go, and actively taken steps to avoid having to get it reviewed. Turning down promotions where he would have had to resubmit it, for example.
There's a difference between someone benefiting from a screw up and being allowed to carry on having proven themself capable, and rewarding someone for actively defrauding the system, even if they proved they could do the job.
He needs the same credentials everyone else is expected to have. There are people who are fully credentialed who face more scrutiny daily than this guy did for 20 years. This is nothing to play with—especially when his performance during a difficult maneuver is what seems to have exposed him.
It's about legality and the company being responsible.
If you fly 20 years without a license and then discover you don’t have it, they might as well give it to you. With 20 years you could be a flight instructor.
Flight instructors are generally inexperienced pilots trying to build hours
What he lacked was an ATP license. The main requirement of which is 1500 flight hours. After 20 years, he definitely would have had the hours. No idea why he didn't do the check ride
If you forged your license, applying for it once you are actually eligible is probably too scary to attempt.
If you fly for 20 years pilot doesn’t need to be in quotations
Beyond that, he does have a CPL, so he is in fact a licensed pilot (or was, I guess). He did not have an ATPL, though.
If he was flying for 20 year you dont need to put pilot in quotes. He was a pilot, he just didn’t have a license or whatever.
He just didn’t have the right pilot license. He had a lesser class of license.
“He had a lesser class of a license” sounds like a scandalous announcement a character would shout in a Gilbert and Sullivan production.
Right. He was obviously hired as a pilot. He worked as a pilot for 20 years. That’s … a professional pilot.
He's a sovereign pilot. He wasn't flying, he was traveling.
It is fraud but why would they get to claw the money back? Termination is warranted and yeah, he's probably going to be barred from ever flying again, but trying to claw the money back seems greedy.
Yeah he did the work, licensed or not he did a job and was paid for it, you can punish him for lying but you can’t take back compensation for work done unless it was some sort of malpractice, like a failed surgery for instance, that seems crazy to try to take back money paid for successful flights executed.
How about to stop people without proper training from attempting the same thing and killing 300 people?
You are hilarious thinking that it is the "pilot" at fault here.
There are like 30 people at the airline that fucked up and are responsible for letting them fly.
If they don't want it to happen in the future, it depends wholly on the airline.
But it looks like their strategy of shifting responsibility works, judging by your comment :P
In the article the finance minister was all but begging on his hands and knees for the airline to be shut down.
He was overridden by the President, who thinks everything is fine. To him it's just a "rebuilding" era.
Also, not sure why "Pilot" is in scare quotes, the dude had his CPL. He just didn't have the higher certification required to fly passengers, which has a yearly refresher requirement. It's not like a dude dressed up in a pilot costume, walked onto a plane, and made a career of it.
The fact there was a safety officer covering for him implies the Airline "looked the other way" until they themselves were caught, rather than him.
My "Why would they get to claw the money back" was in knowledge that the airline let chuckles fly on a lower cert for twenty years. It saved them a lot of money.
I understand why the people replying to me are confused.
I mean the pilot is at fault here and presumably was actively deceptive. The others were presumably just negligent.
Also what is this dumbass argument people love to pull to throw responsibility entirely away to other people. You know several sides can be at fault right?
“Oh I lied but its not my fault, its actually all your fault for not catching me” is a dumbass argument.
A child's argument in fact.
Specifically, my question was as to if there is shared culpability. The airline is trying to say it was him and one safety officer covering this up, but the dude cashed his checks for 20 years.
They're running off government subsidy and have no profit to speak of. Hell, they run a yearly deficit.
The pilot is definitely at fault what are you on?
I’m guessing you’re the kind of idiot that would blame the bar for someone with a fake ID getting sick in it.
Dude literally forged his flight credentials and you’re blaming the people who he tricked. My God.
If you want to know how its possible that people can be so self-serving and callous, this is the reason.
This and everyone who upvoted that comment show how easily people rationalize doing bad things by pushing and diffusing the entirety of the blame to everyone else. Its how liars, cheaters, criminals justify to themselves.
Pilot forging documents to say he has qualifications to fly plane he doesn't have - not at fault.
Just... what? Seriously man, think.
It's like saying tax fraud is not wrong because the government should have caught you before it happened.
Obviously the airline is to blame and so is the pilot. To say either party carry no blame here is just outright insane.
I don't think safety was substantially affected. The main requirement He was missing was having 1500 flight hours. Commercial requires 250, so he has at least 250 when he started
The 1500 hour rule was implemented by the US congress after a crash involving 2 pilots with >1500 hours
An FO really doesn't need 1500 hours. There is not a substantial difference in safety and preparedness than if they had 500 hours
Most of their hours after 250 are going to be spent beating the pattern or flying in circles in a Cessna. It's not really relevant to commercial flying after a certain point
Imoortant edit: I just realized he would have been working well before the US implemented a 1500 hour requirement, meaning SA must have implemented it well before the US
I assumed SA implemented in response to US requirements (many countries follow US aviation regs closely), but that was an incorrect assumption
It seems he could have, at the time, been a qualified FO on a US airline (assuming he passed the check ride)
He received the money via deception.
Can the people who flew in the planes he piloted get their money back?
He received money via labor. He produced money for the corporation and they should pay him for it even if he got to make money for the company through fraud.
I'd be pretty pissed tho if my doctor didn't turn out be one
You'd be surprised how common that is
I'm not sure what the butthole photo is going to show him that the boob photo didn't, but, he's the doctor.
But he still had a pilots license, just not the piece of paper that says he could fly passengers
Labor he wasn’t legal to provide.
I’m not a lawyer, I can’t represent someone in a court of law. If I did under false pretenses I’d be stealing from my “client”. He would be completely right in asking for his money back. I couldn’t claim that I performed labor just because I spent time on the case.
A thief stealing your property can’t claim he performed labor and that his compensation was fair.
Putting time in isn’t the only requirement for compensation, doing so legally also matters
He must've capably performed the job to go undetected for 20 years until his error. Why then, should the airline that clearly failed to properly vet his license and is thus partially responsible be entitled to anything they paid him for that? That's not to say that the pilot should profit off his fraud, just that the airline shouldn't either.
if you got away with representing someone in a court of law and ended up winning their case, i think you’d be in a whole lot of trouble but i don’t think your client would have any right to ask for their money back. You got them off, what more could they possibly have expected to get out of that situation if they had an actual lawyer
My school's business law class covered this.
Actually, yes, the client can choose not to pay even if the fake professional achieved the client's goals. (In your case. Win the court of law)
Unless the fake professional can show the license in question is purely economic (such as business license which is just a form of tax) that can be quickly remedied.
He was fully qualified to fly as a First Officer, he had a valid Commercial Pilots License. He didn’t have an Airline Pilots License which would have given him extra financial benefits at SAA.
He can still go to PIA
May be a tad too late for that.
I think people are missing the Point that he was ALWAYS second pilot on planes.
And the ONE TIME he was the main pilot was when they caught him because he did some irregular things on the flight.
He was still FO at the time. The article mixes upbterks a bit. He was never the captain, who is ultimately pilot in command of the flight, but that doesn't stop him from being the primary manipulator of controls
Pilot in command makes final decisions. Manipulator of controls is actually flying the plane. They may, or may not, be the same person (and can change during the flight)
In the world of software development, we just call this a career.
If it took 20 years to notice, he must've been pretty good at it.
He had all the training he needed, just not the hours for ATP. South Africa apparently, for the time, had very strict pilot requirements. In other countries, he would have been able to easily get his last certification
" Look at me . I'm the captain now "
Looks like he flew… under the radar.
Licensed pilot didn't have the extra credentials for the routes he flew. Dude we a real airline pilot he just wasn't a long haul accredited pilot while flying long haul for decades, really making you question if the required credentials should even still be necessary.
If you can fly planes for 20 years without issue, then you have the credentials.
Flying for 20 years is literally the credentials a pilot would need.
After 20 years, you're qualified.
There should be a statute of limitations for false degrees, like if you keep the act up for 10 years and you haven’t messed enough for your bosses question you, you can just keep the job
One Swedish/Estonian guy flew 13 years without license..
https://news.err.ee/1609856871/man-with-estonian-roots-worked-as-airline-captain-for-13-years-with-no-license
By that point surely he met the "or equivalent experience" part of the job spec
I don't care what qualifications you have. If you are flying the airplane, your title is pilot.
I think it's less an issue of competence and more of "we can't reward this behavior even if he's good at his job because then other people would try to do what he did"
Honestly if you're a fake pilot for 20 years, you're just a real pilot at that point.
Click bait
"SAA said in a statement that, after investigating the incident, it found Mr Chandler had only a commercial pilot's licence."
[deleted]
Lol where does this occur?
Catch Me If You Can
So he was a pilot? He flew for 20 years without crashing. Sounds qualified to me. A piece of paper doesn't magically make someone competent, nor does it's absence make someone incompetent
More Turkey Mr. Chandler?
seems like he must of been doing an ok job.
If he has more than 20 years flight experience, I would say he has credentials.
Well, by the time they caught him, he had accumulated 20 years experience, that must count for something toward getting those credentials
It's rands not rand
They should give him a deaf lawyer, and then hire as an interpreter the guy who did sign language at Nelson Mandela‘s funeral.
20 years of flying… credentials optional apparently.
He was a pilot, OP. He didn't have the required certification for the routes he was flying.
This is standard in South Africa. Especially our politicians.