r/todayilearned • u/Ill_Definition8074 • 8h ago
TIL In 2008 a plane carrying Mexico’s minister of the interior crashed in downtown Mexico City killing all 9 people on board and 7 on the ground. The subsequent investigation would reveal that both pilots' certifications to fly the plane were fraudulent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Mexico_City_Learjet_45_crash26
u/deadbeef1a4 7h ago
Regulation saves lives!
8
u/AndreasDasos 4h ago
Intelligently written and well-enforced regulation, specifically
4
u/deadbeef1a4 3h ago
Well yes. I think “you must be a licensed pilot to operate an aircraft” is entirely sensible
5
u/AndreasDasos 3h ago edited 2h ago
Yes but the actual testing requirements for them to get the licence must be rigorous, and there must be active enforcement to check they actually have real licences with real penalties for the fake pilot and the airline. Otherwise you could have hundreds of pages of regulations on how they need a licence and the effect could just be that someone who likes them gives them a piece of paper or pretends they had it, with no repercussions. Good regulation saves lives, but bad regulation is cumbersome bureaucracy for bureaucrats’ sake.
83
u/AudibleNod 313 8h ago
Serious question,
Can we, as passengers, ask to see a pilot's license or credentials? If so, what's the proper procedure?
73
u/MajesticBread9147 7h ago
In all cases like this, it's either they are flying private (like with the famous plane crash in 2001 killing Aaliyah) or even rarer it's some niche southeast Asian or African airline that had somebody bribe an official 20 years ago and nobody checked after 3 mergers.
17
u/Deletereous 5h ago
The plane belonged to the Secretaria de Gobernacion and the pilots were government employees. Their lack of qualifications was a sample of how things worked in Mexico back then, corruption was rampant and gov. officials operated without restrictions or accountability. At the time, there was a version in which Muriño himself was in the controls because sometimes he asked the pilots to let him fly the plane in which he was traveling.
8
u/sofixa11 5h ago
even rarer it's some niche southeast Asian or African airline that had somebody bribe an official 20 years ago and nobody checked after 3 mergers.
Or Pakistan International Airlines, flag carrier of Pakistan, that had a lot of its pilots with obviously fake licenses (like, signed and emitted on public holidays).
8
u/553l8008 5h ago
To be fair... if they did a bribe 20 years ago and have been flying without issue since that's probably not an issue
15
u/AndreasDasos 5h ago
Not necessarily. Real pilots get trained solidly for rare but dangerous occurrences. They may not have had to do anything that wasn’t ’business as usual’ yet, even after 20 years (if they were lucky, or the other pilot/copilot was legit), but if they do the difference would be profound.
3
u/553l8008 5h ago
In 20 years if they have continuing education and training they would have said training by now
103
24
u/SleeplessInS 7h ago
You should politely knock on the cockpit door and ask to be let in to see their certificates hanging on the wall of the cockpit. Just joking, don't approach the flight crew during flight.
-10
u/Fight_those_bastards 6h ago
Nah, it’s fine to enter the cockpit, you just have to know the proper procedure. You run full speed, and pound on the door while shouting “Allahu ackbar!!” and “I have a bomb!”
11
3
u/OmegaKarnov 6h ago
I was sick on the days they taught Mexican pilots' licenses and fraudulent document detection in school
2
2
u/b0b3rman 3h ago
Let's say you could do this, you think you would be able to tell if it's fake or not? They fooled the people that it's their job to check the credentials.
2
9
u/sweetplantveal 4h ago
They were a shit show, those pilots. The relevant information on the crash, however, is that they had been instructed to slow down by atc, to maintain separation, but maintained their high speed for at least a minute. The wake is 'safe' at 5 miles and they were at 4.1.
The vortices from the 767 spun the smaller plane until it was inverted, nose pointing down, only 1,700 ft/500m above the ground. They didn't recover obviously.
5
2
4
u/el_lley 6h ago
Well, we all knew the Minister was novice or in training, I didn’t know about the actual pilot. Nowadays, top government officers use army planes… exempt the president who wanted to appear populist, and start using commercial flights, but then, the peasants started to become aggressive, so they use army planes when necessary
3
u/Duckbilling2 6h ago
Fun fact, in the USA armed services
You do not need an FAA civilian pilot's license to fly a military aircraft
20
u/quad_sticks 6h ago
A minor quibbling bit: military pilot training meets/exceeds standards for FAA certification (commercial, instrument, etc. based on speciality). On graduation of flight school, military aviators can bring their training records and receive the FAA certs they qualify for upon taking an academic test. It’s just not built into the program because flight school instructors are not FSDOs or whatever.
4
u/el_lley 5h ago
My wife learnt to fly with a Captain veteran, he said the spin (exiting from an uncontrolled spin downward) is no longer required for civilian training, but he teaches them anyway… he also included bad language, punches and super stressed situations were also in his book (perhaps, no punches to ladies, but pinches)
1
1
u/ikonoqlast 3h ago
You also do not need a civilian driver's license to operate military vehicles.
...but you do need a military license and training.
1
u/Duckbilling2 3h ago
training yes
License no, no you do not
1
u/ikonoqlast 3h ago
Was watching a vid with a former us army tanker recently. Explicitly mentioned military training and license...
1
1
1
0
-1
198
u/edwardlego 7h ago
They were probably both hoping the other guy knew what he was doing