In some people's eyes, a go-around in the circumstances described in the 737 accident, is seen as an admission of mistake and a "it can't happen to me" mindset takes over momentarily. The wavering of the first officer is understandable as he contemplates the awful realisation the captain is wrong and yet the F/O is reluctant to shove open the power and haul back on the stick since he knows the consequences for his job if indeed the captain was right. I doubt all the SOP or education in the world can cover the situation that any first officer finds himself under similar circumstances.
It might even boil down to one's personal physical courage. I believe that to be the case here. An F/O is seen as making serious waves if he forcibly takes over the controls at any time. Ethnic culture also plays a large part in this sort of lack of decision making as we have frequently seen in accidents such as the Asiana B777 crash at SFO. Not that appeared to be a problem in the 737 accident.
As an avid reader of accident reports, instilled in me from my early years as a military pilot - and where these reports were always readily available in military crew rooms, I believe each operator's flight safety manager should ensure that both overseas and local (own country) accident and incident reports should be readily available to crews. It is all very well having to regurgitate endless published bumpf on CRM and TEM or whatever is the next fancy name. But studying the cold hard facts in an accident report should never be boring and will generally be remembered.
What should interest a professional pilot is why a pilot made or failed to make a critical decision and the deadly result. An accident report tells you that. It should not be left to individual pilots to research for themselves because few will, in my experience. They have too many other activities to concern them - unless they live for flying (and devour Pprune accident reports!)
"There but for the Grace of God go I" reading of accident reports is a powerful educational tool. Those of us who have followed this particular thread will have already learned a valuable lesson IMHO and hopefully apply it when they go flying next time. Forgive the somewhat inarticulate rambling on a tricky subject...
Last edited by Tee Emm; 29th Mar 2014 at 11:24.