Megan said
Who checks the oil levels? Who does the water drains? The maintenance? Who designs the ILS approach? The crew have to accept that the people within all departments are professionals doing their tasks in a professional manner. Not to say they don't make mistakes like all of us, but they all play a role in the safe operation of our air transportation system. To expect the front seats to be the goal keepers for everybody elses mistakes is to expect far too much.
I agree, and this is where I have a problem with those who try and clinch the argument with "buck stops with the Captain" statements. Of course there are aspects of the commercial aviation infrastructure that are outside the Captain's control and quite capable of bringing down the aircraft. But here's the thing. No one ever expects the high altitude Nav track to be one of those. If they had, to the extent that a single mistyped digit could crash an aircraft, do you think the crew would have been permitted to enter the INS data manually, as was the case with TE901? No, it would've been entered with reference to a chart and triple checked as it was entered.
There's good evidence that Air New Zealand's navigation section was sloppy, and that the expected level of professionalism wasn't lived up to. Vagueness surrounding destination waypoints and arse'ing around with them isn't good. But never would it be expected to cause an accident. Slight surprise prior to commencing descent perhaps (as was the case with Capt. Simpson's flight), problems with fuel management at the absolute worst. Hitting a mountain, no.