Flight crews + unsafe countries

[LisaJohnsonsFacebookMole]

I know from FlightRadar threads there are a couple of ex ATCs and pilots around on MN so I'm hoping one of you sees this!

When a country is considered at high risk of attacks (terrorism, instability, etc) a lot of people won't visit, pretty reasonable. Yet ordinary people do fly to these places for work or because they have family or because they are returning home after a trip. And someone has to fly the planes and crew them.

So do the airline crew have specialist insurance, arrive, not leave the airport and depart in a day or two? Or even do they get straight back on a plane in a non-work capacity and just sleep as they fly out (seems inefficient in terms of rest and cost though) or do they do their regular in-country process but with a bit more wariness? Of course, making up a crew from local people might reduce the risk somewhat if spending a day in the country (familiarisation with the country, don't stand out as much) but they aren't immune from risk by any means and if you had to crew every flight like that there'd not be many flights at all.

As an example, there was a commercial passenger flight from Copenhagen to an Iraqi city this weekend but the UK FCO have Iraq as a red country iirc and I imagine Denmark probably considers it unsafe too.

The Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs currently has no travel guidance for Iraq.

Ah, then my presumption at the very end is incorrect but I'll leave my example to stand. I was using a Denmark-Iraq flight as an example because sometimes people think of these things as very "other" whereas a flight from Denmark feels relatable, if that's the word.

Anyway, good example or bad example, I'm curious about the safety aspect.

I remember Cathay crew don’t leave the hotel in Lagos ( not sure if that was permanent or just because of a specific situation at the time) so they fly there, get driven to the hotel, stay there and then go back to the airport.

It depends, airlines protocols vary and some of what goes on at a detailed level is probably best not discussed on a public forum.

What it’s probably safe to say is many airlines these days don’t just take advice from their government (e.g. for UK carriers the UK FCO), they will almost certainly be getting additional info from other sources (for example there are private companies who specialize in risk assessment, link to one such at bottom of post) and the decision as to wether to operate at all into a destination, and if so how the crew rotation is done will be based on the sum of that information.

If there’s considered no risk to the flight but the ground situation isn’t the best options might be for the crew to advised to stay in the designated hotel (sort of situation @LaPalmaLlama mentioned).

If the ground situation is such that a crew layover is not advised then sometimes the aircraft routing is changed so that rather than going nonstop to the risky place an intermediate stop with crew change might introduced. In that case the risky destination is served as a shuttle, with the shuttle crew simply going out and back from/to the safe intermediate and getting any required rest there. One UK airline occasionally used/uses Larnaca as the intermediate for that sort of operation.

Doing that obviously (?) increases crewing needed and costs to the airline but it’s one way of keeping a route open, something those at the destination trying to get on with normal lives often very much appreciate.

https://www.ospreyflightsolutions.com/sectors/aviation/

@notimagain I was hoping you would see this thread, thanks!

Sometimes crew drop off passengers then fly a short distance to another country to stay.