aterpster #52 ‘I don’t believe’, but we cannot judge other pilots’ beliefs; this is just another example of the difference between how work should be done - imagined vs work as done - reality, even when we are in the same environment.
Fursty Ferret #56. - (West Coast). Not mad, only an irrational human.
The outcome of an event is not a measure of the hazards which existed before the landing, nor the quality of the decision. The pilots perception and judgement may have been exemplary, yet the outcome was not as expected; the margin of ‘unexpectedness’ should have been contained within current safety margins, but it wasn’t. Why?
EMAS is a ‘fix’ for a runway with insufficient overrun margin, either being less than the ICAO recommendation, or for a specific hazard. It must not be consciously considered as part of the normal operational margins, but subconsciously … who knows.
‘No professional pilot would ever see…’ as above you assume that you know how all pilots will behave in all situations; the decision may not be the conscious ‘seeing’ it, but the subconscious bias from the knowledge that something else exists. Our biased belief is that we are rational, all pilots are rational, irrespective of situation and context; except that most accidents show that these beliefs are misformed.
And re PIREPs, the conditions perceived by the report could have been ‘good’, by their judgement at that time, etc, etc; we don’t know, but having been broadcast, the potential for bias exists, we skip our revised assessment.
With such subjectivity PIREPS are valueless for assessing actual conditions, good or not so (NB use in triggering downgrading assessment TALPA).