“Hopefully our non-blame aviation society will address the problem and not the person”; lomapaseo 27 May. I agree, but with little confidence that ‘hope’ alone will succeed.
During the accident landing what were the other crew members doing? Surely if the weather conditions were unfavourable for continuing an evaluation then the Captain / Examiner should have curtailed the check. Why didn’t the Captain take over if the landing was not progressing as expected? An examiner cannot just sit back and let a poor landing deteriorate into a bad one; he has a role to play and a responsibility to intervene. The industry accepts that first officers may have reduced capability or judgement with respect to that of a captain; that is one reason we have captains.
Furthermore, from the originating incident, an alt bust, the outcome implied blame on the first officer, what was the captain doing during that incident.
At worst, the First Officer could be criticised for poor judgement of personal capability in the prevailing conditions or failing to alert the captain of such concerns … but then who amongst us would have taken such a (career limiting) decision?
As lomapaseo states our non-blame aviation society will address the problem, but what is, or where does “the problem” originate from? Is it an industry wide attitude, the regulators, the operators, or all of us? We are only human. Who will address the problem? Is an industry-wide culture change required, we all talk ‘no blame’ culture, but how many practice it? I hope that it does not take another major accident to introduce the necessary culture shock.
Yet who am I to seek these answers, for in doing so I seek to blame someone other than myself.