They (SOPs) can't tell you exactly what to do in an emergency when you're required to think outside the square.
Sorry, pretty much all emergency responses are laid down in a QRH, emergency checklist, whatever your company/manufacturer calls it. There is NO DECISION to be made 99% of the time, only a process to follow.
Of course we all love to throw up the QF 380 incident but the reality is that represents an almost unmeasureable percentage of flights that took place in that year alone. Clearly pretty important if that happened to be the flight you were travelling on!
Listen to what the crew did. They followed checklists, did some handling checks etc. Most of which is prescribed in emergency checklists or manuals.
Your statement may be true to a point about day to day airline operations but the reality is when the sh#t hits the fan management are the first to pat each other on the back because the experience of the crew have saved the day and their KPI driven bonus has been saved.
The crew do their job by following procedures. There is no room for free thinking here. The fact that management glow in the reflected glory is not something we can change.
Icarus, we still have high capacity RPT flying into non-towered aerodromes. The sh!t I saw today in the circuit from VFR-on-top traffic circuit entry vs high capacity RPT would make your hair stand on end.
I hear you. I still do the same and probably see and hear the same as you. However a busy clusterfeck of a circuit area does not mean lots of decisions to be made. Mostly it is applicaton of logic to keep the aluminium apart
