Originally Posted by
Armchairflyer
Santa Bárbara Airlines Flight 518 is IMHO an example where a less experienced captain (or even a "magenta line addict") would probably have refrained from taking off with some of the navigation equipment not (yet) working properly.
If I recall correctly, the crew were not aware of the extent to which the nav equipment (even down to the mag compass) was broken.
And the Los Rodeos crash is arguably another case where experience and reputation were at least a double-edged sword.
That was an almost unique situation in that the Captain had spent more time in the simulator as a TRE than he had on the line over the previous months. In the sim, obtaining clearance was usually a formality.
Don't get me wrong - overconfidence is dangerous, and experience *can* sometimes breed overconfidence. However, fundamentally they are two different things. AF447 exposed an industry-wide problem whereby training in several areas - in particular stall recognition/recovery and high-altitude manual handling - had been allowed to slip too far.