Another Asian Airliner Crash Sparks Explosive Debate Over Bad Asian Driving
The Third Crash In A Year Involving Malaysian Airliners Has Rekindled The Debate Over Whether Bad Asian Driving Is Turning Commercial Airliners Into Suicidal Death Machines.
By KRISTINA NGU, MATT HUSSFORD, ALEXIS SHAWNEE, LEEZEL TANGLO and DEAN SCHABNERBERG
Published December 29, 2014
SURABAYA, Indonesia — As helicopters began searching land Tuesday for possible wreckage from AirAsia Flight 8501, a small controversial group of aviation experts have intensified their calls for restricting Asian pilots. For the third time in a year, a Malaysian airline was lost. This one contained 162 people aboard when it vanished in stormy weather over the Java Sea.
Diversity should not be at the cost of a death sentence.”
The aviation experts consist of primarily American and European pilots and retired military personnel. Some, however, are Hispanic, African and even Asian. They assert that Bad Asian Driving (or “BAD”) has caused unnecessary loss of life in commercial aviation and should be more heavily regulated. Fringe elements even call for the banning of pilots of Asian ancestry.
BAD became a term used in aviation circles the crash of an Asiana Airlines’ Boeing 777 in San Francisco. This crash was determined to be due to pilot error. Even after that disaster, however, few would admit what now appears to be all too obvious: BAD has gone from being a threat on the roadways to becoming a cold-blooded killer in the skies. Soon after the Asiana crash, Malaysia Airlines have lost two aircraft after they went off course.
Aviation officials have yet to determine what might have caused AirAsia Flight 8501 to crash. Although it encountered stormy weather, this ordinarily is not enough to cause an airliner to crash. It is possible that the pilot did not properly monitor navigation equipment which might have malfunctioned due to the inclement weather. Failure to maintain altitude could have caused a crash into the ocean.
Santa Marino professor of comparative neurology Bruno Giordano has made BAD his primary focus of study. “I firmly believe that this will be another case of BAD,” said Prof. Giordano. “Thunderstorms do not down airliners, but bad Asian driving does.”
Prof. Giordano traces BAD back to the 1983 Korean airliner shot down by the Soviet Union after it veered into enemy airspace. “These mistakes concerning directions and altitude mirror what we see on our roads each and every day,” said Prof. Giodano.
Retired Air Force colonel and frequent cable news contributor Hank Aldrin said that AirAsia 8501 might be the rice grain that breaks the donkey’s back. “The first rule of aviation is common sense,” he said. “We see Asian pilot after Asian pilot crash airplanes full of people, so what is the common sense thing to do?” Col. Aldrin believes that this crash could have resulted from insufficient air speed -- the same cause of the Asiana Airlines crash at SFO.
After the crash of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17, the National Transportation Safety Board acknowledged that further research into BAD and its impact upon commercial air travel was warranted. Depending on the outcome of the present investigation, the agency will be under more pressure to take action.
“I think that the world needs to take off its blinders,” said Col. Aldrin. “Diversity should not be at the cost of a death sentence.”
Antoine Fernandes, CEO of the regional carrier AirAsia, said it was too early to make conclusions about BAD. “Until we have a full investigation and know what went wrong, it would be unfair to conclude that Asian-driving is the culprit,” he said. He noted that all of the victims were of Asian ancestry, so the Caucasian world community should not be involved.
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