Originally Posted by
CherokeeDriver
What a sad story. A person in a safety critical role deliberately sabotaging a critical aircraft system. How on earth did American Airlines manage to create such a toxic work environment for their employees? I don't in any way condone the actions of this member of staff before anyone suggests otherwise.
There may or may not be a toxic work environment but the only person responsible for this is the individual concerned and in large organisations it is difficult to ensure that there are not occasional individuals who perform unethical or dangerous actions. I am sure his recruitment, management and supervsion will be investigated.
I once called in to assist in a long running investigation of a medical imaging device which the customer complained was consistently producing poor quality images but whenever serviced was absolutely fine. This turned out to be a hospital employee who had previously worked for the manufacturer who had a grudge and was deliberately detuning/miscalibrating the system after servicing although he had no responsibility for working with the machine at all. We as the technical team took a little time to realise we were not looking at a technical issue. The whole thing was strange, he was not going to benefit, it could affect patient treatment although the possible impact of this was limited by daily QC checks on the machine, it was never going to make a long term impact on the company concerned and if he continued to sabotage the systems performance he was bound to be caught eventually. The sad fact is that there are a small proportion of people who take such actions and they are not always easy to spot.