Flintstone
"Ultimate" as in basic, highest or greatest cause. I suppose it is slightly ambiguous as ultimate can be used to mean last in a sequence in time, but the context should clear that up. Overarching is the term I prefer to think of, but I was not sure of the quality of Pace's English.
Agree about swiss cheese as a term, but I suspect it is fairly new to Pace and it is simple. I did prefer to use the term error chain, but Kerplunk is even better. Cheers Spunky!
Pace
What thread are you reading? It sure isn't this one!
No-one in this thread said that the cause of an accident has been quoted as illegal air taxi. That does not, of course, mean that there are not many accidents that would have been prevented by the systems in place for an AOC. No-one has said private flights cannot be safe.
You still haven't understood the modern concept is that no accident has a single cause. That is exactly what I mean by you being 30 years out of date
If you don't get that then you'll never understand the safety implications of an AOC.
You have a simple, touching naivity about monetary concerns in corporate flight departments though. I like that, as long as you never work for a tight-fisted company! Nice to see you've repaired your comma button. Any chance you'll get that randomised shift key sorted?
johnriketes
I am dumbfounded. I can't decide whether you are a well-informed troll or an ill-informed aviation worker. To suggest in a thread to which at least three AOC post holders have contributed that paperwork is pointless must, surely, be a windup?
Do you really think that pilots would actually operate more safely if no-one was monitoring them? That operations would not push the boundaries if there was no-one monitoring them? That the postholders reading this would really take legal responsibility for the safe operation by pilots who don't fill out paperwork?
There is something called the real world. In that pilots are not platonic perfect beings always thinking of flight safety first. In that some pilots are rather too relaxed about flight parameters, and some operators are. In that there is a thing called "economics", so that the thorough operator will be outcompeted by the one that cuts corners, which without paperwork will never be spotted until too late for the pasengers who died.
In that "real world" the rest of us inhabit pre-flight paperwork takes about ten minutes, as does after-flight paperwork. The pre-flight includes printing off and reading the weather and NOTAMs, completing a load sheet and checking and filling out the tech log to confirm the serviceability of the aircraft. The only time it takes longer is if there is a problem with any of this, which I personally want to know about before getting airborne. Not sure I want to fly with you if you miss these out even on a private flight!
In fact, now I think about it, I can't think of only one piece of paperwork I do before a public-transport flight I would not do before a private flight. That is a loadsheet that I wouldn't complete if I was well within parameters flying a familiar aircraft. That takes about a minute, maybe two if I have to calculate the departure fuel.