Originally Posted by
Asturias56
The problem is that although there may well have been many careless people only one was flying the aircraft that day. And as has been pointed out - he only got off by invoking a unique medical condition that, shall we be generous, has many people baffled.
The same could be said of the display planning. Had they not set things up so that the loop was very close to a major busy road then the pilot being careless may not have resulted in a lot of people being killed. From what I've read the airworthiness issues may not have contributed to this accident. They could easily have done though. Hard to find any aspect of the planning of this display, its execution on the day, or the airworthiness of the aircraft, that were up to snuff. The pilot's error was the critical one. That seems more by misfortune than judgement. The aircraft airworthiness and the display planning were an accident waiting to happen. To me that is indicative of a culture of carelessness.
Many of us have seen this before. When there's a lack of discipline and sound leadership it's inevitable that complacency and carelessness result in safety standards dropping. Who here hasn't seen this happen? I have, for sure. In a very different environment. The case I remember is where the culture of "get the job done" meant that it had become "custom and practice" to ignore "inconvenient" safety procedures. This level of complacency had built up over years. No one really noticed it. Leadership by example was non-existent. The key thing was keep things running by fair means or foul. I have a strong feeling that this air show had fallen into the same trap. Been running for years and was the perfect breeding ground for complacent attitudes to set in across the board.