Originally Posted by RAT 5
I found it amazing that in the Cali B757 crash they tried to blame Jeppeson and Boeing. Incredible. It was a major human screw up, up front.
RAT 5, I am going to be somewhat more harsh than Dozy Wannabe, because the available information and analysis has been out there, in full view, on the WWW, for some 14 years now.
There is no "tried to". The named manufacturers were responsible for features of their products that demonstrably played a causal role in the accident. You may read about those features in the NSTB letter on the accident to the FAA. A Texas court later found those manufacturers partly responsible, because of the causal factors of the accident contributed by those features of their designs. The courts are, sometimes, able to follow careful causal arguments that don't rely on the gut reactions of casual observers, and pilots everywhere should be grateful for that.
Accident analysts look at all the factors. When you say "major human screw up", I take it you mean that the behavior of two pilots + controller was solely responsible for the accident, and that features of the nav database and FMC programming were not at all responsible. If that is what you are claiming, it is demonstrably mistaken: check out our causal analysis from 14 years ago at
http://www.rvs.uni-bielefeld.de/publ...i_accident.pdf
If, rather, you are claiming something milder, such as "yes, features of those products did play a role, but the human-behavioral components on the day were so much more important causal factors", then you owe us a definition of what makes a "more important" causal factor and what makes a "less important" causal factor, and a demonstration that, according to your criterion, the features of the automation provided by those companies was unimportant. And while you do that, you can explain your disagreement with the NTSB and the Texas court along with it. Good luck with that.
PBL