Retired BA/BY
It's easy to criticise but unless you were in Sean's shoes then it is very hard to say you wouldn't have done the same thing.
We are all taught (and for us QFIs we all teach) to be very careful with pins and respectful of EJ seats. Nothing has changed in that regard.
All I can say is that Sean learned a very hard lesson for the eternal benefit of the rest of us. I check my seat pin far closer now than I did before his accident. As Stuff says, we just weren't fully aware of the problem beforehand.
I'm not overly chuffed when people come on here and say things like "I would never have done that" and "what the hell was he thinking?!".
The quote 'Don't judge a man until you have walked a mile in his shoes' springs to my mind. You may well have been a previous FJ pilot and you may have achieved thousands of hours in them but you weren't a Red Arrows pilot in 2011. If the criticism had come from one of the team then I would listen. To the best of my knowledge, this has never happened.
You may disagree with me and I'm not trying to start a fight but those are my thoughts. As a counter argument how would you feel if I were to come onto a similar forum and bad mouth the actions of a BA pilot after a fatal accident? Sure I'm a pilot but I've never flown a heavy transport aircraft.
BV