Hi Framer - I'm glad you you liked my first post
. I've been a lurker here for years, but have never bothered posting.
I understand the Reason Model/swiss cheese model, factors that occur in incidents/accidents, and all the other stuff that goes with it. I understand that we can make the industry safer by looking at the whole incident, company health, and commercial pressures. I understand threat and error management and risk assessment. I've spent long enough in this industry in a number of roles to have a pretty good understanding of all those things.
But that does not excuse poor airmanship or unprofessional behaviour. If I ever have a FO on my flight pull out a mobile phone on descent and use it then he'll be paxing the next sector home.
If, as a crewmember, you are fatigued, then part of our professional duty is to not go flying. Similarly, getting sufficient rest before you go flying is part of that responsibility.
Can we change systems to provide some form of protection against fatigue? Certainly, but the onus will always come back to a crewmembers decision to not go flying if they are fatigued as everyone has different ways of dealing with fatigue (there is not a one size fits all solution).
It is up to us as professional aviators to set the standards that we will accept and not accept, and that is an issue here that is often lost. We, as aircrew, are one of the final filters in the safety of flight, and there will always be unintentional errors made, with consequences that occur, but to shy away from the basic premise of flying the aircraft is and the responsibilities that entails is, to put it bluntly, a cop out.
BD: I did not mean to degrade general aviation, and I hope you did not take it that way. In many respects, it is a harder and more dangerous job than flying a RPT jet. My point was more to say, if you can't do the job professionally, then don't; or at least don't take up passengers that have placed their trust in you or paid for you to do your job. It is obvious from your post that you understand and accept the responsibility of holding a pilot's licence, but unfortunately it would seem that not everyone else does.
Cheers,
BW