Originally Posted by
T28B
But since you don't know, any harangue on this as the causal factor - that is the problem we are dealing with in trying to keep this discussion professional - is a case of jumping to conclusions.
With respect to your experience, there is a chance that the forensic based investigation may or may not prove this consideration to be valid.
And we still don't know whether or not they put the gear down before the first approach.
FFS, how about we work with the basics and then climb up the causation tree. (And for all I know, you may be right!)
To put this in perspective: I had a pilot in our multi crew aircraft (a great many years ago) who - a pilot who was not Muslim nor observing Ramadan - get a bit strange on me during a night flight due to him being mildly hypoglycemic.
Negligence on his part for not taking care of an issue (diet) that he knew about ahead of time.
Different root cause, same result: he was useless to me. (Yes, he got a piece of my mind once we got back to terra firma)
How may accident investigation boards have you been on?
It's bloody hard work.
Please don't misrepresent my point. I was replying to a post that said we should be looking at aviation issues and not cultural issues. I was merely saying that insofar as cultural issues can affect human performance, and insofar as human performance can be a factor in accident causation, cultural issues should be considered. My experience in accident investigation in Middle East Oil & Gas (different from, but relevant to, aviation accident investigation) has indicated that there is very, very rarely a single, one-and-only root cause: that is simplistic. Instead, there are a plethora of human, mechanical, organisational, managerial and cultural issues that on one unhappy day or night all come together (cf John Reason's Swiss Cheese model). I did not say, nor did I infer, that the cultural issue was
the root cause, I simply know from experience that an investigation that fails to dig deep into the cause-behind-the-cause-behind-the-cause is unlikely to reveal the full picture and thus prevent re-occurrence. Khalas!