Originally Posted by pattern_is_full
Without in any way wishing to ally myself with Wageslave's "little moment"...
I am troubled by a piece pf phrasing that pops up in a couple of posts.
Quote:
s_t_b - "Nobody (intentional acts of destruction aside) sets out routinely to cause an incident or accident."
CoMB - "It is also reasonable to say that very few pilots go to work with the intention of making a significant error of judgement."
That is a low-rent, low-bar, passive standard. A five-year-old can get into a cockpit without "the intention of making an error."
A pilot needs a more assertive attitude: "Today, the world will throw all kinds of $%*# at me - the NOTAMs will be unintelligible, ATC will be obtuse, other pilots will cut corners, the electrons will go haywire, the weather will conspire against me, the bits of cement will be indistinguishable, and I'm not too sure about the guy/gal in the other seat - but I will overcome all obstacles, prevail, and finish the job competently and safely!"
That does not mean one has to be cynical or bitter or scared (skeptical, yes) - one can be a "happy warrior," taking joy in every successful ploy to outwit The Hunter (Fate). And when one arrives safely, and looks back on a flight where, in fact, most things went right, say "Hunh! That was actually a pretty good day!"
Given that it wasn't just this crew, but apparently at least two other crews who also made an approach at the closed runway, albeit without actually touching down on the wrong runway, that strongly points to blame other than the pilots.
If it was an isolated incident it could be apportioned (not completely) to crew error as a result of any number of factors such as complacency or fatigue.
But multiple crews made that same approach, they can't all have made the same mistake by chance, there must have been something like a glaring lack of clarity in the NOTAMS or some such.
People have been saying that crews are routinely landing on that runway in normal ops so have got into the habit of that runway and are used to it... but if the crew could fall into that trap... why not ATC?! They're surely much more used to 04R, so isn't it equally likely, if not more so, that in the briefest moment of complacency or distraction they said 04R instead of 04L?
The number of times I hear crew around the south coast in private aircraft talking to ATC with a company callsign before remembering they're not at work... isn't a brain fart like that equally as possible in Pisa?