Originally Posted by
blind pew
It’s all well having a go at the flight crew but it can be a bloody difficult job especially setting priorities with the bull**** of paperwork, checklists and when they can be completed, fatigue, strange airfields and languages (I include American regional accents in that sans le Français ) without the ridiculous long duty days and jet lag.
The airlines want more and more blood out of the stone. In my day 650 flying hours left me knackered and as soon as I could afford it I took unpaid leave as a 40 year old..ok electronics have changed things and you don’t need the flying skills of 30 years ago but it is still a hands on job and airfields aren’t the easiest thing to navigate even in daylight. I’ve called for a follow me at home base for the local captain who got lost whilst I was doing the after landing checklist.
BA managed to take the wrong taxiway Twice in SA hitting a building the second time - that takes some doing.
The sesnse of "having a go at the flight crew" pervaded the initial phases of the aftermath of this incident. As is widely known, the union for American pilots - assessing only from the public statements at the time - had significant concern about the workload factor. And IIRC how the company had imposed changes on procedures without having engaged properly or sufficiently with the union about these changes first. The changes, in turn, were reported as having been a factor in why one or more of the pilots did not realize their taxiing mistake (the F/O was concentrating on getting through the procedures, as recently changed).
These concerns were, at least in part, the basis for the union challenging the process NTSB intended to follow for gathering information from the pilots (recording of interviews).
Not having worked through very much of the Docket, I don't know whether any statements from the union, about the dispute with the company about procedures being changed, or about the process for interviews, were provided to NTSB and are somewhere on the Docket. But even so, as an SLF/attorney (whose practice for many years focused on employment and labor law matters) I have to wonder what views are held inside the union and obviously not being publicized - or not publicized yet.