How I ended up flying for Yemen's national airline – and survived | Hacker News Reader

How I ended up flying for Yemen's national airline – and survived

pprune.org

191 pointstechonup31 comments

The OP of that thread later went on to do a contract with Kam Air of Afghanistan, which is another good read: https://www.pprune.org/terms-endearment/662364-kam-air-expat...

A highlight:

> YA-KME for example, has a strange little thing where you’ll get an ECAM Red ENG 3 FIRE after you detent into CLB. For f*ck sake, don’t discharge the bottles, there’s no fire. It’ll shut up after 3 or 4 seconds. Again, reason unknown, everybody just kind of lives with it’s quirks now. KME is commonly referred too as “Kill Me”, as this is the aircraft with the most random issues. Brake temps breaking the charts when you start up from cold and dark in DXB for example. You’ll get used to them, and you’ll get used to which ones are “KME Normal” and KME actually trying to kill you.

I'm sure the usual suspects are pounding away at their keyboards with condemnation but after reading that but I think that's a pretty gloving review, all things considered.

Agreed, unlike the Yemenia one, this one sounds like it's mostly professionals doing the best they can under difficult circumstances.

Found this part interesting:

> somehow Kam Air can keep all of their APUs operating but European carriers I've flown with will go the entire Summer season hopping about the Greek Islands with it INOP

If anyone knows: is it normal to allow dispatch without the APU? I kind of assumed it would be a required redundancy, especially on an airbus where the computers and electronics are what keeps the thing in the air ...

The APU is not on during flight, so not a safety thing. It's just for providing power (and bleed air) on the ground (if there's no other power source). E.g. can't start up at airports without external power with the APU INOP.

if you don't have a RAT you need the APU for emergency power if your engines fail in flight.

APUs have a common mode failure with main engines: lack of fuel. Are there designs out there which require emergency power after engine failure and don’t have a RAT?

There was a Mentour Pilot video on the Jeju Air crash that touched upon this. With a dual engine failure on a 737, you lose both generators and fall back to the emergency batteries (no RAT). The aircraft remains flyable, but it's extremely challenging - you need an operational APU to make things a lot more manageable: https://youtu.be/9GbmGUk8Y0M?t=2001

If I remember correctly it came very useful during US Airways Flight 1549 accident?

Another great read, thanks for linking!

I remember reading report from another captain, flying for Kam Air or some other Afghan airline about a decade ago. I recall his hotel got attacked by Taliban suicide bombers, but other than that the contract went fine. I guess things are calmer now out there.

I was highly impressed by KAM. Almost normal. They did a nice job depending on Dubai as a base:

> Like many airlines, Yemenia use one of the major rostering apps, and rosters release 15 days before the end of the month. Even despite the rocket attacks, car bombs, mortars, and intermittent electricity and wifi, they do still manage to get the roster out on time, which is more than I can say for the few European carriers I worked for.

Outstanding.

Its interesting.

I live in "kashmir", India side and the place is on a similar no-go by both UK and US governments travel advisory.

https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/india

https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/...

Us has a level 4 do not travel.

The point is, we are around 10 million souls living in this place and we call it home. It may not be for Americans and British but its our home.

Reading this article, im sure travellers here last month could give similar "harrowing" accounts of escaping from the valley and the stuff they did.

Yeah, terrorism tourism is real and its "extremely cheap" compared to last month. More safer I would assume but yeah.

The air fare has dropped to like 30%, hotels are empty so they will offer you sweet deals.

Last time I was backpacking in India and wanted to go to Kashmir (2008), violence just flared up badly after long period of peace and was outright told not to head up north from Amritsar. I've read few articles how tourists in Srinagar (our goal) were all gathered by army in barracks and flown away.

Makes sense from Indian army point of view. I wouldn't expect its easy to even get there, especially if westerner, we stick out of crowd properly even when skin tone may be similar, clothing is obviously very different. There is a reason why those prices are so low. Maybe nothing happens, maybe something does. Flying is probably safest, if one ignores the possibility of ground-air or air-air missiles, intentional or not.

When was the last time a commercial airline was attacked in Kashmir?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_and_union_ter...

These are the crime stats and even while our stats are skewed by jammu, overall its still a much safer place.

Think of it this way. 26/11 happened in Mumbai. Who would've thought ? That hasnt stopped people from visting Mumbai or rest of mainland India ?

I get it. The perception of threat is worse than an actual threat.

So.... you know if since 2008 as you said, any tourist was caught up in the issue ? I dont remember.

The only reason is tourists are not coming. I am a consultant working with the industry and EVERYONE has cancelled. Hotels have closed operations

Great read! I'm a bit surprised the author (and others?) didn't get a bro-level warning from others who'd done this. Oops; hindsight is 50/50. I suppose this post is just that, and I bet no one else will walk into this with expectations otherwise! Granted, rapidly-changing field with the war...

I wonder if it's such an obviously bad idea, that nobody felt like they had to issue such a warning.

I've worked with a bunch of ex-Yemini (who left around 1949 and 1950) and not once have I heard one say he was homesick for _anything_

Tried to figure out their routes: https://yemenia.com/flights. "No Flights Available"

Hidden here for whatever reason:

https://cairo.yemenia.com/

https://mumbai.yemenia.com/

Wikipedia page for airlines is generally an accessible and reliable source of active airline routes (and destinations for airport pages)

I'd read a whole book of stories like this, great writing.

Why you wouldn't get tf out of there on your first Cairo landing is beyond me.

. . . because it's your paycheck?

Get out while you're still not extorted for your passport. Classic Arab employer mirage of promises.

> Classic Arab employer

Doubt Arabs in Tunisia or Iraq do this? You probably meant the Kafala ("visa sponsorship"), usually abused by businesses (illegally so, in Bahrain and the UAE) employing blue-collar workers in ~4 GCC ("Arab") states.

Do you think those laws apply to foreigners? Locals only, temp foreign workers go in the can for reporting it… inshallah.

There's a huge difference in potential blowback between mistreating some poor bastard from Pakistan who signed on as unskilled labor and a trained airline pilot from a Western country.

Edit: And how in God's name are you going to extort the passport from someone whose literal job is to fly an airplane to other countries, where they not only need it to do their job, but can just land somewhere and be like "peace out, I quit, I'm not flying this thing back."

Did he speak to his co-pilot before flights, though?

>Pleased with himself, he asks you how he did and is disappointed when you tell him that he didn’t actually land the aircraft, some French computer engineer did.

This.

That was unexpectedly authentic and entertaining!

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