Pilot Flew Passengers for 13 Years On Fake License
A pilot who flew passenger planes for a 13 years with a forged pilots license has been fined €2,000 and banned from flying for a year.
Thomas Salme, 41, has been flying passenger planes for the last 13 years, despite the fact that he does not have the license required to do so. Though the Mr. Salme was once a qualified commercial pilot, he was never licensed to carry passengers and his pilot's license was expired when he began flying passengers 13 years ago. Salme accumulated 10,000 unlicensed hours in the air by flying with his expired license, which he had doctored.
The Sun reports that Mr. Salme was working as a maintenance engineer for SAS when a friend let him try the airline's full-scale flight simulator while it was not being used. Salme said he trained in the flight simulator for two to three hours at a time and claims he used it between 15 and 20 times in the space of a year and a half. Using this experience to pass a test-flight with Scandinavian airline, Air One, Salme said it was surprisingly easy to get the job.
"I got the crackpot idea to apply as a co-pilot at a real airline so I made myself a Swedish flying permit with a logo out of regular white paper. It was a fantasy creation. It wasn't laminated and looked like something I'd made at home. It was surprisingly easy."
A big part of the reason why Salme was never caught was that these permits look different in every country.
"The documents look different everywhere in Europe. An Italian airline doesn't know what a Swedish license looks like. And you can forge all the IDs you need."
Salme was caught in April after a tip was sent to Dutch police. He was arrested on a Boeing 737 just as he was about to fly 101 passengers from Amsterdam Shiphol to Ankara in Turkey.
In an interview with Sky News, Salme said that despite feeling ashamed of his actions, passengers on his flights were never once at risk.
"The moral point of view is that I feel ashamed that I did lie but I didn't ever feel, not once, feel that I put passengers in an unsafe position," he said.
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hmm..... "Catch me if you can"...lol
I miss that movie....
Well 10,000 hours of safe flying over 13 years is just as good as a license if you ask me!
A lot of job's on this planet require degrees, qualifications ect, but if you know what you're doing why not give it a shot anyway.
"A pilot who flew passenger planes for a 13 years with a forged pilots license has been fined €2,000 and banned from flying for a year."
By the way, that only cost him 2k and a year ban?!!!...
"so I made myself a Swedish flying permit with a logo out of regular white paper. " Isn't that a crime?! No jail time for doing so?
ugh.... hmmmm...
I guess it is kind of scary to think about at first... but if he flew for 13 years without crashing - I think it's safe to say he's not going to crash. May as well give him the license.
Im totally appalled that he would even think he could do such a thing like flying a plane without that little piece of paper telling him he has the skill to do it!
On a more serious note id much rather this guy with his 10k hours and no license flying me around than a noob with a license and only 200-300 hours, just as id rather a surgeon that's been performing surgery for 13 years successfully rather than a 20 year old nub fresh outta college
/troll face
Well 10,000 hours of safe flying over 13 years is just as good as a license if you ask me!
Gonna respectfully disagree on this one. A licensed pilot would likely have more emergency training... so although nothing has happened to this "pilot" yet... should something bad come up, it could get really ugly. It's still an interesting story and maybe someone will give him a second chance in a year when his ban is up.
It's like this. Anybody can learn to drive a car. It is just proof that you did pass and know what you are doing (somewhat). It is to cover your ass. Same thing with this. It is to cover the airlines ass. If he were to crash, would the above comments be the same. I don't think so!!! Not only he would pay a fine but he would probably lose everything he has/owns and prison time.
Makes you wonder how many others are out there like him....
he was a good pilot, perfect flying record, better than most actually... though now he being tied up with red tape and thrown outside with the dogs. pity.
agree with rodney_ws post.. air travel is very safe. but it is when something goes wrong, this is where fully trained pilot will have a much better chance of survival. Just like driving a car. even very bad driver can drove for years without crashing, but when accident do occur, it's a split secs decision between life or death where good drivers have much better chance of surviving.
I believe this just shows that government licenses mean nothing. You should never feel more safe just because someone has been license by any government agency. That just means that they passed the government's low standards(which they usually are) to meet the minimum standards. It is usually the industries that these "licensed" individuals work in that set the proper standards that really makes an impact on safety and you can be sure that this pilot was trained by the airline before he made his first flights.
Government standards mean little and licenses mean even less. I have met some real idiots that hold license to do all sorts of things, from medicine, to law, to many other professional-level jobs. I would put my live into the hands of unlicensed people before I would some licensed individuals.
A lot of job's on this planet require degrees, qualifications ect, but if you know what you're doing why not give it a shot anyway.
yeah..he proves anyone can fly a 747
I agree, 10k hours of flight with no injuries/death = give him a license for free
I disagree with the people saying he didn't possess the skill in crutch situations. In pilots training they dont teach you what to do when the roof flys off.. not to mention he already knew how to fly a plane. he was a trained pilot. just not for commercial airlines. you think theres a big difference in the safety book?
Its just like driving a car. you see PLENTY of horrible drivers on the road with a license. they wernt trained what to do in an emergency. its experience. he had plenty.
I disagree with the people saying he didn't possess the skill in crutch situations. In pilots training they dont teach you what to do when the roof flys off.. not to mention he already knew how to fly a plane. he was a trained pilot. just not for commercial airlines. you think theres a big difference in the safety book?
Its just like driving a car. you see PLENTY of horrible drivers on the road with a license. they wernt trained what to do in an emergency. its experience. he had plenty.
I disagree with the above posts about something going wrong. Pilot training would just be textbook about what to do in emergency situations, something this guy could of easily read on his own. Its the simulator that he got his training from. A flight simulator can easily be made to simulate emergency situations, better then any textbook or paper training. He had the same level of access to training materials as a licensed pilot would of had.
Honestly he should of just taken the test and got his license, but who knows what paperwork / requirements were present.
I see situations like this all the time (paper vs experience) in the IT field. You have lots of guys that are cert monkeys, they do nothing but use testking.com to study the tests and get lots of paper under their belt. But when it comes time to actually ~do~ something they don't know what to do and are basically worthless, well not quite their good at getting coffee. Something the IT field is learning the hard way, experience > paper every time. Just HR likes papers cause their nice and neat and easy to quantify.
I believe this just shows that government licenses mean nothing. You should never feel more safe just because someone has been license by any government agency. That just means that they passed the government's low standards (which they usually are) to meet the minimum standards.
I don't know where you live, but in the United States, becoming an airline pilot flying big jets is no simple task (a 737 is no puddle hopper prop commuter that people can get hired on for a few hundred hours). It takes years of experience and constant training and refresher training in simulators several times a year. This guy was flying the big iron. He wouldn't have gotten away with that in America and our government FAA standards.
What a CHAMP!!
ok so the man committed fraud. He obviously knows what the heck he is doing if he can fly 10K hours and not have an accident or injury. I'd say ok once this ban gets lifted he should just go take the tests get the real papers and fly. I'll bet those tests would have nothing on him if he's already got 10K hours of in air experience ill gained or not
hope he gets a real license once his ban is off...
Experience is king in my book.
Well, the first paragraph of the article states the man used to have some sort of commercial pilot's license and that it expired. I wonder why he created a fake license instead of gettting a real license. Are pilot licenses for commercial aircraft expensive?
Well 10,000 hours of safe flying over 13 years is just as good as a license if you ask me!
Good point.
This is kind of a big deal. The security implications pretty serious. If anyone can forge a pilots license and get away with it, whats to stop the bad guys from doing the same. Sorry, but this shows that there are some gaping holes when it comes to airline security.
Gonna respectfully disagree on this one. A licensed pilot would likely have more emergency training... so although nothing has happened to this "pilot" yet... should something bad come up, it could get really ugly. It's still an interesting story and maybe someone will give him a second chance in a year when his ban is up.
Something bad must have come up in 13 years.
If it's like, super critical, I expect very very few pilots, experienced or not, would be able to cope. I say give this guy a licence after a quick training course.
Like someone said above; Experience > Qualifications. A huge mistake people make these days is to reverse the operand.
He should have gone about it the right way if he was that confident of his abilities..not put lives at risk. As stated, what's the big deal with renewing one's license? I wouldn't even think about pulling a stunt like this.
He has the track record and experience. I'd say reprimand him, but then give him a license.
If he can fly for that long without being detected and not crashing the plane then it means he has the skills, too bad he didn't get the license in the first place, what a good career that would have been for him.
And this is a technical/hardware related article how?
honestly they should just give him his license and let him continue his career... Yes he should be punished, but should be allowed to continue as a fantastic pilot.
As many people here say. 13 years of safe flying should give him the damn thing. Its like an apprenticeship