I see the cause of this accident from this perspective:
we don't train our Captains to be Great Captains.
In the (very) old days, the Captain was capable of coming back after takeoff if he discovered his preferred brand of whisky was not on board...
Ridicolous for nowadays standards, of course.
But it's on this trait of the
character that I want to focus here.
The Captain was and felt like a God, the master of his world.
We all know the culture has changed a lot in the last decades, also because many accidents have been attributed to this kind of behaviour, called machismo.
In Tenerife machismo caused the worst accident ever, right?
Hmmmmmmm... wait a minute.
Can't we say that if the American crew had been
more macho, more capable of dominating their environment, less afraid of hurting the controller's feelings, instead of worring all the time about what was going on, they would have grabbed the mike and asked directly to KLM " Hey mate, where the **** are you, be careful we're on the active runway behind you!" ?
What I' m trying to say is that too many Captains today are
weak individuals.
They really have a hard time resisting all the psycological pressures imposed by the system.
I remember when I was an ATR copilot in Europe, I was ashamed by the weaknesses too many Captains demonstrated, even the experienced ones.
The commercial pressures have become so many in this exasperated competitive market, thet it's very difficult to an individual who doesn't have
balls to say
NO .
Too many accidents have happened because the crew was incapable of saying NO.
Air Florida, dozens of others, and eventually, Luxembourg.
In this last tragedy, the captain was skilled and experienced, but obviously,
a weak individual.
Didn't he know that making a detailed briefing before
every approach is
a must, and especially in CAT II, didn't he know that checking the glideslope (alt vs distance) is
a must , didn't he know thet being fully configured with the landing cklist completed before 1000ft in CAT I is
a must ???????
Yes, he certainly knew all that.
Selecting reverse in flight was the last stupid action of a
desperate individual.
Being strong is hard sometimes, we all know it, and that's where management and senior Captains failed pathetically:
they failed to set an example in everyday operations, to forge young pilots to a certain character, a character capable of saying loudly
"Fu*k the schedule, fu*k the fuel consumption, fu*k everybody, I am in command and that's the way I'll do it...".
Nor the Luxair captain nor the copilot had this strenght and ability behind them, and when they accepted the approach clearance they accepted their death sentence.
I'd like to tell a little episode regarding myself, even if I'm a bit embarrassed for obvious reasons, and also for my colleagues:
some months ago, during sim ckrides, our chief pilot put in the same scenario for every crew: engine failure after go around and purposely too early approach clearance for the ILS, about 6 miles from threshold, while in the middle of abnormal cklist and stuff...
Well, after I replied firmly "Negative sir, we are not ready for the approach, we'll call you back when ready in about 3 minutes", he bursted into applause sayind I had been
the only one not to fall in the trap (I can imagine what orrible mess followed for my colleagues when they closed to the ILS with still a thousand things to do!).
Embarrassing to tell (no pilot could resist a sense of proudness after such words)
, but what I'm trying to say is: why the hell the others had no force to say NO?
I was fortunate enough to have a strong model, a quite rude Captain who was famous for his bad character, but was definitely a great individual: my father.
The F50 captain also had a Captain father, but certainly of a different nature...
I'm glad he and his son survived the crash, to live forever in shame for those who lost their relatives.
LEM