Tartare wrote
My sense was that airline pilots were a little like doctors in that respect.
Management can say all they like, but when you're up in the air with a couple of hundred souls down the back, you are in charge, and your `oath to safety' so to speak overides anything else.
Very true. It is easy to have learned opinions about how things should be done if you don't also have the responsibilty for the outcome.
I always listened to their views, but got a bit irritated when a paramedical told me how to do something in an insistent way, when they did not carry the can for it when or if it went wrong for the patient.
That is where the responsibility of command in flying is very similar.
I have followed the Mt Erebus accident closely over the years, and read the Mahon and Vette books, and the Royal Commision and original accident reports. Gordon Vette and Justice Mahon were courageous and decent men.
All I can say is "there but by the grace of God go I" to anyone who chucks armchair opinions about the crew.