Originally Posted by
ams6110
I agree. This is how commercial aviation has become as safe as it is. When accidents happen, we seek not to blame individuals, but to understand root causes, and prevent or reduce the chance of the same thing happening again by correcting design or materials defects, augmenting training, changing procedures, improving regulatory oversight, documentation, and communication, or all of those things.
Sadly it seems there is a trend in society (I call it "outrage culture") where the response to any calamity is one driven by anger and blame, and not one seeking to solve actual problems. Or maybe I'm just getting old.
"
This is how commercial aviation has become as safe as it is" I suspect that it is rather an Alice in Wonderland perspective. Every accident that involves loss of life, ultimately requires the investigation and apportionment of blame. Nothing has significantly changed in that respect. Air accident investigation does its best not to make legal findings because that is for the courts. Liability for mistakes is an important part of concentrating the mind... not just in the aviation world. Improving safety standards is largely due to commercial necessity. Public trust goes hand in hand with passenger volume. It is the breach of trust that can harm aviation. Countries have laws and hopefully those laws are respected and enforced when appropriate. Negligence, criminal negligence, dishonesty and corruption are possible in aviation as with every other walk of life. If individuals knowingly allowed or concealed unsafe systems being incorporated into the 737 MAX they will be be culpable. It is not a witch-hunt for the law to be enforced. The criminal test is an
actus reus combined with
mens rea. It is a high bar but one that could be reached. There are already signs that there have been some concealment and lack of candor. The circumstances demand that there will be further criminal and civil investigation to properly apportion blame. It may be that there were a series of innocent mistakes but that does not seem to be the most likely. Regardless of innocence, blame will still have to be apportioned to calculate compensation claims.