Spanair accident at Madrid

[justme69]

For that and other reasons I do not believe at all it was for "commercial reasons" that some airlines (not only Spanair) "stuck" to the original McDonell recommendation of checking TOWS in the first flight of the day and then whenever pilots entered a "new" cockpit or where absent from an "old" one for a long time.

They know TOWS don't fail that often nor are they too hard or expensive to fix (relatively quite a simple system).

They know it SAVES them money. They know it only takes 2 seconds to test them.

But somewhere, the person translating/writing the SOPs for Spanair (and other airliners) never heard of Boeing LATER recommendations to change that to "check the TOWS before each and every takeoff-period".

Nor did the FAA or EASA or any other regulatory body in the world make such a recommendation mandatory.

I'm pretty sure should there have been better communication between Boeing and Spanair (or the other operators which SOPs still didn't include the updated procedure), I'm pretty sure it would've been adopted.

In fact, Spanair adopted it a few days after the accident, before any recommendations or directives were out.

I do not know what communication channel failed there. I don't know if it is each individual airline job to constantly bombard Boeing with:
-"Have you changed anything from our SOP"?
-"Have you changed anything from our SOP"?
-"Have you changed anything from our SOP"?

Or if it is Boeing's job to query each operator flying their airplanes:
-"Have you included recommendation update YYY-XXX?"
-"Have you included recommendation update XXX-YYZ?"
-"Have you included recommendation update AAA-BBB?"

Or if all Boeing has to do is fax EASA/FAA/each country's authority and say:
"Remember procedure XXX-XXX? Well, it was wrong. We found a better one. Please tell everybody to use YYY-ZZZZ instead. This is the only communication we will send out."

And then pass the ball to each country regulatory body to oversee the update and compliance.

Spanair claims they were never told about the update in procedure and therefore never included it. Their SOPs were the ones they thought were recommended by the manufacturer and approved by Spanish and European regulatory agencies and of course would've passed FAA ones too. Other airliners flying at the time in Europe used the same standard procedure.

So who do we "blame"? Obviously all of them have some "fault" in the subject, but who is the main culprit? The way it is now, it seems they all thought they were doing the right thing. Except, maybe, Aviación Civil or perhaps FAA/EASA?