Originally Posted by
Thomas coupling
Megan - the human psychology is for another debate.
Given, aviators are not the best at dispensing it at times but please let's not cloud the issue here.
Please understand that there is a process to go through and the process should be based on the latest information we have when addressing a safety related incident such as this, which is "Just Culture" (Look it up sometime).
Just culture is not a NO blame game. We all learn from it but we must use the tools avaialble to find the ROOT cause of the problem.
In this instance, it is that a human being miscalculated / misinterpreted their position in space. We cannot then dissect it further by determining if the pilot missed breakfast or had an argument with their partner before leaving for work, or was abused whilst a child. We 'the aviation fraternity' are not in the business of psychological profiling or councilling. If we were, dozens of current pilots would be out of work, I would suggest!.
Once the cause is found, we can then apply just culture to determine the punitive actions. This is where the humanity comes in to compensate for the human factors that caused the problem in the first place.
BUT understand this, the pilot involved must be left in absolutely no doubt that it was they and they alone that caused this accident. Looking for someone else to contaminate (the person who ranged the first helo - is muddying the water). If the 2nd helo was from another police unit, coming for a visit; would they have done the same thing?
Try and move away from: "Society is to blame", often it boils down to an individual who drops the ball for a second. Plain and simple.
Debrief the pilot.
Admonish the pilot.
Educate the pilot.
Fly the pilot.
Bring them down.....................and then rebuild them.
TC,
Nobody has said it is a no blame game when people make mistake. Just culture is just that! You do a deliberate/intended act which is a violation and
there is no excuse, but if it was an unintended one based on misjudgement/honest mistake it is a whole different cup of tea.
The result (i.e.. crash) could be the exactly the same scenario.
Just saying she did wrong without finding the root cause is too simple, as you would not know how to fix the problem, and here is where I challenge Crab as to what was the root cause. He suggest as I quoted (exactly!) earlier to remove her license (what he considered the root cause).
If you and Crab seriously mean that the dumb-ass pilot would only need to be:
Debrief the pilot.
Admonish the pilot.
Educate the pilot.
Fly the pilot.
and the problem would be solved, I'll agree that
would count for this pilot as she would sure as **** never want to do this over! But it is obvious that she was not operating there alone, so in your way of dealing with the case it would be a great chance for it to happen again, but to another complacent pilot (a few years down the line). You have treated the symptom, not the root cause.
If I'll use a comparison like som of the others do: If you have stomach pain due to cancer, you don't treat the pain with painkillers do you??