Strabo wrote:

Eeyore wrote:
Strabo wrote:
Eeyore wrote:
Mike Ash wrote:
Nomen Nescio wrote:
From: "vaughn"

I have a friend, a retired airline pilot, who spent a year flying in the
middle east after he "aged out" in the USA. His main comment on returning
was that the locals had a real cultural problem with piloting because too
often their response to an in-flight crisis was fatalism. Some would
actually mumble something like "insah Allah", fold their arms, and watch
events, rather than continuing to fly the plane and do whatever it takes to
innovate their way out of an emergency situation. For that reason, (this
was about 15 years ago) he claimed that Arab airlines generally preferred
western pilots.
I find that hard to comprehend.
Yet, I don't find it all that difficult to believe.

I guess the whole "God helps those who help themselves" thing is lost
in that culture.
What if it's a problem with their pilot population rather than the
population as a whole?

Certainly there are plenty of people in the US who freeze or give up
when a crisis erupts. Yet very few of those are pilots.

Could it be that in Arab countries, the same basic proportion of the
population is fatalistic like this, but somehow more of them become
pilots than here? Is there something about the political, social, or
business environment that causes people of this type to become pilots
there?
Hard to say about that but it happens in Asia too. Look how often KAL or China
Airlines trash a perfecly functioning plane for example.

OTOH look at QUANTAS and BA.
Culture makes the difference. During the few attempts made to hijack
Chinese planes, the pirates were overpowered and shoved out the door.

Can you provide a cite for that ? Most aircraft doors are of 'plug' construction
which prevents them being opened in pressurised flight. Depressurisation if possible
would also be unwise.

Around 2001 I compiled a list of all air piracies since they began in
the late 1950s to determine who was doing it and why.

These incidents were on Chinese domestic airlines, maybe in the 1980s.
Probably prop planes. There have only been a few. No, I didn't save the
articles.

OK, possibly unpressurised then. I can sort of believe that could happen back then in
China.

Nevertheless, culture DOES affect how crews operate. Asians are far less likely to
question the Captain even if they know he has made a bad decision.

Graham