Grizz;
The tone of the dialogue on this emerging issue as seen not only throughout PPRuNe but through other forums to which seasoned professionals are contributing, the appearance and testimony of Captain Sullenberger before Congress a month or so after the ditching and the Adam Hanft article on "
Deconstructing Sully; The Cult of Sully; More Than a Hero, a Holdover", saying the same things, and the nature of the accidents we have seen, (not all of course, but certainly the Schiphol accident, the Kentucky CRJ accident, probably the Madrid MD83 accident and, only in my opinion from what is known to this point, the Buffalo accident), are pointing to a pattern, spotty we know, but for those who do this work, sufficiently clear.
This isn't just about stalling an airliner by not paying attention. This is about an industry-wide malaise, the tip of the
Frank Bird triangle which has at least three if not four accidents at the top and which has plenty of data down below.
Nor is the malaise I believe I am describing exclusive to "incidents or accidents". In fact the term "malaise" is not a term describing "cause" but is a cultural/social characteristic. But the Bird model does not attach cause or a "WBA" model to the numbers - it's just a graphic which portrays relative occurences. Seeing an emerging pattern is a tenuous exercise with such thin data but in this business, each incident carries antecedents, even the Schiphol accident.
Included in that kind of "pattern-making" analysis, which draws "the long line" and accepts/accomodates aberrations and individual examples contrary to the pattern, are the effects of economics, possibly de-regulation, possibly the factors which are only very briefly touched upon in the earlier post.
This doesn't deserve a wholesale assault response because the aviation industry is not falling down around our ears, but it deserves some careful examination and discussion by the industry itself as well as those doing flight safety work. In this industry as you likely know, it doesn't take many occurences for a pattern to form; that's one reason it's as safe as it is - very early, and hopefully aggressive, interventions.
These are thoughts that are occuring to me as I write - the only interest is to raise awareness of such patterns and invite examination of same.