One of the greatest improvements lately in relation to flight(and medical) safety is the Non-Punitive Culture Philosophy. That is probably alsowhy both the FAA and EASA have included it in their texts.
Luckily a major part of the armchair-and-MS-FS foundedPPRUNE’ers are not involved with SMS, as we would probably have never been ableto evolve from the “Bad Apple” attitude that is so easy to apply. History showsthat it doesn’t solve any safety issues but heck… at least it provides the basic non-educatedpart of the population with a culprit to hang – preferably in public.
A lot of the self-appointed judges seem to forget that noneof us get up in the morning with the determination to screw up our jobs badly enoughto become part of the evening news.
We all want to return safely to our families. With that inmind we can start working on the systems and procedures needed to fix theproblem.
I once travelled a short leg with the nose gear extended.
The aircraft had non-standard, without my knowledge, beenmoved during the day to free the parking spot. For that, gear pins had beeninstalled. During external inspection I missed the fact that a pin was forgottenin the nose gear, partly perhaps because the “remove before flight” streamerwas worn and very short.
Standard decision could be to throw out the mechanic forforgetting the pin, and me for not performing my inspection thoroughly enough.
After analyzing a couple of similar incidents it was decidedthat gear pins and pitot covers needed a logbook entry. Since then it has neverhappened again.
Executing me, and all the next guys
up wouldn’t havesolved anything.