I've never come across that IMSAFE thing before but it seems spot on.
This is what should concern us most about our present operations. All the factors (too many to list) which are negatively contributing to each of the IMSAFE criteria have actually been exacerbated by management's response to recent events. Awareness of the symptoms is a good thing, but even then we are kept in the dark and we have to rely on rumour and speculation to try to determine the causes of each event and quite frankly none of the events have been fully explained as of yet.
Sadly the underlying problems are not being addressed and in fact these problem areas are becoming worse by the day.
It is the 'perfect storm' of flight safety issues. Fatigue, concern about careers and even some concern about the viability of EK, few options for other jobs which precludes people most negatively affected from removing themselves from the airline/city/management that is causing the grief and last but not least.... management who has not only caused most of the problems but who are now aggravating the situation.
If a company pushes way too far on occasion or if they demand a higher than acceptable tolerance of stupid policies such as crew rest, rosters, or lack of days off over a longer period of time, then it is a foregone conclusion that performance will decline. A little stress can be good but big stress or long lasting medium stress will inevitably cause human beings to do things they would otherwise not do.
It is fitting that human fatigue is called FATIGUE, because quite often the causes would have little affect if they were not present for long periods of time. Metal fatigue and human fatigue are similar; if you repeatedly bend a wire it will eventually break.... but up until the point it breaks, it might go unnoticed. Bend a human being too many times and he might seem fine until the point he breaks too. Minor or major errors in judgement, sickness, higher than normal alcohol intake, or irritability and disagreeability demonstrated by human beings are often symptoms.
The LAST thing that should be done, is to increase the stressors by firing people for an error in judgement, for which they had no previous history of making.
I wonder if the Gulf Air guys are wondering if EK is headed down the same path they followed years ago. Perhaps the similarities are not valid, but it makes me wonder.