Asiana Pilot Set Throttles He Didn’t Understand to Idle

SF Gate ^ | December 11, 2013 | Alan Levin and Jeff Plungis

[Zhang Fei]

Most asian pilots don’t know how to manually fly a plane.

The guy who wrote the article claimed to have worked as an Asiana flight instructor, so I'd say that unless instructors at other airlines chime in, it's an Asiana-specific phenomenon. Probably boils down to money - more time spent training => less time per pilot spent flying passengers and goods => more pilots required => more salary expense.

[Vermont Lt]

According to the book of Arnold, the system has become self aware.

[Don Corleone]

Actually, not. There was an American pilot that trained airline pilots in the east. He said that there were many other problems that were from their cultural background — like never questioning anyone higher in command. They also did not like to get their “hands dirty” by flying it themselves rather than letting the autopilot do it.

This is true, true, true. Also the company manuals call for the pilot to put the Aircraft into automatic control as soon as possible after take off and leave it there for the whole flight if possible. IOW many of these guys have VERY LITTLE actual stick time, maybe 3 or 4 minutes on a 14 hour flight. They are accidents looking for places to happen and have been very successful at that objective over the last few years.