Originally Posted by
Leclairage
Absolutely, Speedpig.
However.
It remains a Fact that innocent passengers put simple trust in those up front to get it right. Each and every time.
I do, each time I board an aircraft.
A mistake was made here. An avoidable mistake. And anyone who flies, not just the bereaved, are entitled to call those who are responsible for those who made the mistake to account.
Unfortunately Leclairage, you are not so entitled - or at least not so simply.
What you seem to be saying is that if there is an established procedure, and a pilot deviates from it, then a clear cut case of pilot error has been established.
The adoption of this approach makes it very easy to decide who to blame after an accident has happened, but unfortunately human performance is not so mechanistic and so this way of thinking does nothing to help avoid accidents in the first place. Indeed it may increase the risk by setting up a culture which increases the feelings of pressure experienced by pilots.
So what is also required is that those who organise the systems within which pilots work pay attention to design factors that are known to increase or decrease the risk of a mistake being made. For example in this case it would have been prudent for those designing the taxiway layout to factor in the risk of confusion.
This does not let the flight crew off the hook, but when you get on an aeroplane you are also trusting everybody who ISN'T up front, but who contributes to the operation of the aircraft, to have done the best they possibly can to design the operational environment in such a way that it minimises the chances of a mistake being made, and has the maximum reasonable degree of defences against mistakes that are made.
If you have a confusing airport layout you KNOW that you are increasing the chances of a mistake being made, so you either change it or compensate for it.
It is true that there need to be sanctions against individual failures that are a consequence of loss of attention, but if you assume that training systems for flight crew are robust, and that incompetents never reach or remain on the flight deck - a circumstance that you DO have the right to trust in - then punishment based control focused on the person who makes the mistake doesn't do much at all for aviation safety, and may even make things worse.
It does, however, make angry and grieving people feel better, and allows those other people who are only there in spirit on the flight deck (or in the maintenance hangar) to continue making THEIR mistakes with impunity. What we passengers really rely on is professional integrity, we cannot rely on people who will never make a mistake because if that were a requirement for employment as a pilot there would be no airline industry.