SDFlyer;
Can we reconcile society's need to assign blame (as appropriate) to the requirements of a robust safety culture?
I re-read the comment I made and realized that I left out an important piece of information or perhaps even misled by leaving the possible impression that it is airlines who actually do the checking, with no involvement of the regulator. Quite the contrary but here is the arrangement:
Airlines designate check pilots who are trained, checked and if successful, granted check authority to conduct check rides and recurrent IFR/PPC (Pilot Proficiency Checks) simulator rides on behalf of the regulator. In short, they have licencing authority. So while it is the regulator that is responsible for the checking, most of it is done by the regulator's designated representatives who are almost always airline staff. This staff is not automatically the most senior or the most experienced but nor can just anyone who applies for the position do it or do it well.
Such staffing is almost uniformly very good and where necessary and/or mandated, failures do occur. The relationship is not "incestuous" as some outside the industry might perhaps think but is instead highly professional.
All this stated, the comments have gone from detailed and anectdotal to "pass/fail" usually with an intermediate quality which passes the candidate but indicates a repeat exercise or an otherwise marginal execution of the procedure. Too many "marginals" will result in a failure. This will not have developed without the regulator's authority and concurrence.
This applies both in Canada and the US. I do not know how it is arranged in Europe or Australia but I strongly suspect it is the same. There simply aren't enough inspectors otherwise, and, under SMS, certainly not in Canada with the introduction of SMS and the consequential reduction in TC staffing where it counts.
So the reduction in commentary is a process with an intertwined history and not merely associated with the airlines; the regulator has the final say because it is the regulator, not the airline, that licences pilots. Just to clear that up.
btw, I agree with whoever said that the whole training/safety culture of professional aviation is superior to that of any other profession - the ne plus ultra. I speak as a professional in the "medical industry" shall we call it.
I think any one of the professional airline pilots here could have said it. The industry's safety record and fatality rate speaks to this very approach. That observed, I think it would be very challenging for medicine to achieve the same level of safety - I believe the processes are much more complex, the diagnostic process far less rigid and much more complex in terms of SOPs and the outcomes often take much longer. I think intuition plays a greater role and by definition that wonderful human quality does not lend itself well to standardization. I know there are other differences and authors/medical people like Guattari have written wonderfully about these issues.
PJ2