TowerDog;
If the airplane was in good order, and the flight was not hijacked, then incompetence in the cockpit is a real possibillity....
I wish it was not so, but reality is that 100+ folks are dead and I doubt we can blame the Bogeyman or Tinkerbell, yet certain folks are leaving no stone un-turned to shift the focus away from pilot error in any sort or form
Some folks are, some aren't. Some are reserving judgement in favour of curiosity.
But if judgement deems "incompetence", then, what? It may seem a slight diversion to examine the word, "incompetence", but it means something.
The obvious meaning is, 'those in control weren't up to the task.'
But then, what? Were they not up to the task in that moment, or historically, or during that cycle or...?
Without discovering the many antecedents which, with hindsight may be reverse-engineered from the initial impact in the sand, the argument that "the pilots were incompetent" becomes both circular and meaningless.
In other words, examining the word isn't merely an irrelevant academic exercise in a philosophical decontructing of meaning from the text: These words convey real meaning to people, within the context of this accident and what we know about airplanes, people and people-in-airplanes.
If "what happened" is to be found out, then it is necessary to go beyond such notions as "competence", "pilot error", and even "human error". If the airplane was completely healthy, then, that the pilots were at the controls and made a mistake is plainly, bluntly obvious. What then? Where does that
conclusion take us? What is fixed? What has changed?
The entire concept of a safety culture, a reporting culture, the sharing of incident data and collecting data to examine it for precursors to an accident is to take the discourse beyond but not away from, the crew. If the notion of blame, responsibility and even the notion of "forgiveness" is part of the discourse, the conversation, even among the experts and specialists if they permit such terms to enter their conversation, has changed from
finding out what went wrong so it can be prevented from occurring again, to the human need to find fault to satisfy very real human needs and emotions.
When we or more commonly 'the system' whack(s) someone (with jail, fines, 'time off'), usually the pilot, (or ATC or....?), what really has been accomplished and what will occur the next time such circumstances arise?
I submit that we already know the answers to these questions; they are lurking here, occupying our time right now on this thread.
Blame only answers one question. Blame
concludes the dialogue, it does not open it up nor does it benefit anyone. Blame also permits the excusing of others and allows those in charge and capable of responding, to ignore change in favour of quarterly reports.
I know this thinking seems black-and-white, but 'telescope' the notions and this is what we see. For some operations, these realities have been managed exceptionally well. For others, they just have to pee on the electric fence, sometimes more than once. A big, fatal accident for a major carrier these days is about a US$10b hit to the bottom line but, in my one blunt criticism about a characteristic which has common threads throughout this industry, the bean-counters scatter like rodents when the light is turned in their direction, preferring blaming pilots to honesty.
Just some thoughts, mainly at this moment for the passengers and pilots.
PJ2