KUALA LUMPUR, June 28 ― When pilots ask for divine intervention on a flight, they would only confirm the fears of passengers that they are in serious trouble, a retired US Air Force pilot-turned-therapist has weighed in.

In his criticism of an AirAsia pilot who reportedly asked passengers to pray on a rocky flight, Ron Nielsen, also a retired airline captain who has worked for three decades with people who have a fear of flying, said pilots have a responsibility beyond passenger safety.

"I do not know exactly why the pilot thought it necessary to ask for divine assistance,” Nielsen wrote in a commentary titled "Why airline pilots should never ask passengers to pray” on US news site Fortune.

Nielsen, who has been a pilot for almost 40 years, said pilots practise abnormal events like engine failures in a simulator during initial training and every year thereafter so that in the unlikely event that they experience such an occurrence, they would have "conditioned” themselves so as to react in a calm and direct manner.

"But apparently the flight situation rattled the pilot enough that he asked the passengers twice to pray. If that weren’t enough cause for alarm, there was at least one follow up message from the cockpit, ‘Our survival depends on your cooperating. Hopefully everything will turn out for the best’,” he wrote.

Nielsen said pilots could greatly influence passengers’ emotional states by reassuring them through regular announcements.

"Airlines and pilots need to prioritise not only keeping their passengers safe, but also making them feel safe. Hopefully AirAsia (and other carriers) will learn from this incident and handle potentially traumatic situations better going forward,” he said.

The former pilot also chastised AirAsia’s response towards the traumatic experience that the passengers went through.

"The airline’s mistakes continued after the flight landed. One passenger felt that AirAsia provided no medical support or information about replacement flights after they had gotten off of the plane,” added Nielsen, who is known as "the plane whisperer”.

"The passengers would have been better served if following such a potentially traumatic incident, the airline provided someone to talk to immediately who was knowledgeable about traumatic stress and could reassure them that while the flight was upsetting, at no time were they in real danger.”

AirAsia has come to the defence of Flight D7 237’s crew after former minister Datuk Zaid Ibrahim criticised the pilot for reportedly asking passengers to pray when an engine failed during the flight that forced the plane to return to Perth, Australia.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau reportedly said Monday that the first engine on the twin-engine A330 Airbus aircraft had failed during the Kuala Lumpur-bound Sunday flight with 359 passengers on board.

The plane landed safely without incident in Perth.

Australian and Malaysian transport authorities are both investigating the incident, as are AirAsia and engine maker Rolls Royce.