How much does "company culture" come into the acceptance or otherwise of pressure to fly in the corporate world ? Clearly some such operators are purely one man/one machine private bands while others are integrated into a wider commercial company structure where more than one machine and a mix of ops is involved- ie Haughey Air or Rotormotion that may or may not run commercial, ie public transport ops alongside/in parallel with the private/corporate stuff.
Surely here lies a wide dichotomy in both rule and role play?
Purely depending on the identity of the client the same man/machine system can operate to two completely different sets of rules in exactly the same operating environment - they may go to Ascot on one day with client "A" on one set of rules and the following day do exactly the same trip with client "B" on a totally different set. The mindset then tends to morph into pressonitis regardless. History is full of them.
Is this not going to cause a muddying of the rules in even the best regulated of companies?
We have seen the result of sloppy operations control in the accidents to Haughey Air that seem to me to illustrate this concept. How widespread is this situation likely to be? Do gash operators bring about accidents by subverting good pilots to operate as gash ones? I've seen far too many good pilots subverted by gash operators to know otherwise though thankfully Professionalism among the pilots almost always prevents the potential accidents.
It seems to me that the blame for chancing this sort of event is as likely to rest on the company's expectations as on the individual pilot - I don't mean to absolve the pilot of his responsibiities but company pressure can be devastatingly powerful in overwhelming an individual's Professionalism.
I have seen this first hand in several companies (FW and Rotary) and have lost my job for reacting to the pressure more than once so it isn't much of a mystery to me. I have to say that unpleasant as each occasion was it was not a substantial handicap in further employment, and in some cases quite the opposite.
Am I alone in wondering why this isn't a more frequent topic in the "How the **** did that ever happen?" discussions?
I wonder how many of us have not heard of an accident to a particular person/organisation/operator and thought "How the hell did he/they get away with it for that long". Some of course did get away with it insh'allah tho it must have made even his eyes water, but I suppose in those blessed cases no deadly harm was done.
Perhaps this accident was nothing to do with this sort of thing at all, but no doubt others more current than I in the industry will be better placed to judge.
Last edited by Wageslave; 1st Dec 2015 at 23:18.