Originally Posted by
Flight Safety
I find I'm almost completely in agreement with 411A. One of his more interesting comments:
I'm not saying that other factors shouldn't be looked into, because they should. But I agree with 411A that these ARE basic errors. Clearly there seems to be a weakness in the safety culture and related training at the airline. If you want to point a finger somewhere else besides the crew (and look for accountability elsewhere), then pointing it at the safety culture might be the next best place. Maybe the investigation will uncover something useful here.
You are right Flight Safety. They are basic errors. Almost as basic as say...taking off without being cleared to takeoff. Hard to believe, but someone made that mistake in Tenerife and the deadliest aviation accident occurred. I guess you could also say it is as basic as setting the flaps for takeoff. Who forgets that, right??
In my airline, and I was always taught, you check the flaps before takeoff. And I'm sure Continental and NWA both had procedures in place to prevent that, but somehow that very simple detail was missed in Michigan and Texas.
Well guess what, humans are human. They make mistakes, and that is gonna keep happening for as long as we exist. What we can do, is learn from our mistakes, not just say "I learned better because I was taught in my academy that you do this and that, so I would never do that". It doesn't matter how old you are, where you were trained and what your flight time is. ****t happens and we can either through blame back and forth or we can look for ways to prevent it.
I have no doubt in the world that from what I can interpret on the CVR, the FO and CA were tired. They were both yawning throughout the recording, and the FO called for the briefing twice. That is a really good indicator that he wasn't firing on all cylinders.
Be advised, fatigue is like intoxication or worse. You are not performing at your best, but even worse, you don't know it. It is the things you don't know that you don't know which will kill you.
