Attitude at impact?
Bearing in mind our very expensive and ongoing training, our appropriately high opinion of ourselves and our undoubted skill and proffesionalism, why is it we still crash?
Undoubtably some accidents are unavoidable, however some which have resulted in total or near total death and destruction, might just have had a differtent outcome if we, as pilots, had a somewhat different attitude to our abilities to handle the situation.
No-one likes to admit they have reached a point, either in the simulator or for real, that they are in a situation which is now beyond their control. If the pilots who 'heroically' crash landed the aircraft at Souix City had admitted defeat much earlier they mighht well have saved everyone's lives.
If they had decided that the best course of action was to admit that control was almost impossible and that to crash land, in a shallow glide, then the aircraft may well have come to rest in one piece.
Consider also the fact that the remaining engines on the ill fated and almost inverted Concord were at full thrust and again you might wonder if the better course were to admit defeat and shut them all down before impact, hopefully again in an upright attitude. I am not suggesting that the outcome would have been so different, nobody can see what might have been but I would be fairly sure that the outcome of some accidents would have been different had the pilots at the controls had less of an 'I can do this' attitude of mind.
I suggest such scenarios should be introduced into our simulator training to demonstrate that a crash landing is not the worst outcome of an 'event' such as this!
Any thouights?