Originally Posted by
Uplinker
What the thunder is going on in aviation? ..................................... How are people like this allowed anywhere near an aircraft, let alone the cockpit of one?
My guess is that there are people like this all the way up the Management Tree in many, many airlines so they "hire/promote to personal Spec" (ie hire/promote people doing what they do themselves). In some cases, it's far more important who you know than what you know - re the Air India "Capt" who kept landing her A320 (I think) on its nose wheel. I've seen plenty of cases myself where promotions are "interesting" to say the least. Often, genuine professional ability counts for ziltch. Fortunately, such idiots have been away from the "coal face" - but even they can screw things up by, say, cutting staff levels at the coal face to meet an unrealistic savings target knowing that the next promotion will come from the saving they make tomorrow and that they'll be well gone by the time the operational chaos ensues a year down the line.
OK, so we are probably seeing a bit of a change in slightly less of the "gung ho" types in the cockpit - but these have been simply replaced by far more of the "cut-throat commercial pressure" types, maybe not even in a flying role but who sit looking at, say, fuel bills and budgets. "Captain Snodgrass has done 2 go-arounds in the last 6 days! What's he playing at?" types. Does it happen? Not seen it myself - but I'll not relieve you of any money by betting on a certainty that that sort of stuff happens! After all, the "fuel monitor"s bonus is linked to them shaving x% off the fuel bill this year and people doing go-arounds are not helping him/her towards that bonus!
We all make mistakes in the paddock - and hopefully learn from them. Some are even forced into mistakes due to things like punishing Rosters (or over-zealous fuel monitors) but, even then, we should know better and say "No!" - easier said than done I know. Then there are also a whole raft of people who probably operate, routinely, out on the Prairie day-in and day-out as that is quite usual for them and their peers. Been doing it for years. We only see what makes the accident statistics. We never even hear of the routine level-busts, non-stable approaches and general flying mayhem. That said, flying is still incredibly safe - just that there may be quite a few more pilots related to cats out there than we think - just they will not know when Life #9 is now in operation.
Anyone into counting cats?
And, once you have done that for aircrew, you could start on ........ Engineering? ATC? Component suppliers? You know, at a personal level, it's
far less stressful to look at the headline Safety figures rather than think too deeply about what contributes to those figures and, more importantly, what has nearly adjusted those figures but never been recorded (ie all the near-misses). How to solve it? Sheesh! Now there is a fortune to be made by the person who comes up with that "Holy Grail"!