Originally Posted by
RatherBeFlying
The argument would rely upon the defendant knowing or ought to have known that the accident was waiting to happen. The FAA had the database, but failed to act upon the accumulation of near miss reports.
It's more difficult to argue that the airlines should have been doing FAA's job for them.
You have a point
RBF but, ultimately, it's the airline who is responsible to keep their customers, staff and innocent bystanders (ie Joe Public going about their lawful business) safe. They are the operators and their Safety Management organisation is there to reduce all Risks they face to ALARP.
Sure, the FAA have that same responsibility in ensuring their airspace is safe and operates safely. However, that does not absolve the airline of their own Safety responsibilities. Just to say "Well, the FAA say it's OK so it's fine!" is not enough. Aviation is littered by 1000's of cases where the National rules say one thing but an airline will be even more restrictive. For eg, the ILS minima for an approach to R/W 24 at ABC may be, let's say, 100ft, but Airline XYZ itself says only Captains may fly down to that on this particular approach - their 1st Officers can't even fly the approach at all (for whatever reason)! Obviously, you can't go less restrictive than the Regs but you can go more restrictive.
The data in the various databases is freely available (I've used them myself for research back in the day) so the airline should be doing it's own "due diligence" around their operation rather than blindly accepting what the FAA say. However, and there always is one of these, the "downside" is that it may well be more expensive to operate within the more restrictive case which will upset the Finance Department who will cite the regs.....
And so it goes on......... The only certainty is that the lawyers will do well out of this (appols to
Willow-Run!).......