Originally Posted by
underfire
. . . You make the call, and stop putting words in their mouths as they have already spoken.
1. underfire, let's assume your factual picture is painted with complete accuracy. Nonetheless, it is based only on what has emerged in the preliminary phases of the investigation. Further assume that the severity of sanction you evidently believe is deserved by the AC crew is in fact justified and deserved. Nonetheless, AC could be due for sanction too, and so could FAA if a more damaging event had occurred which fortunately it did not. So, in at least hurrying if not rushing to judgment about crew responsibility, you are short-circuiting the full process. The disagreement is not with your conclusion that the crew, if erring the way you state they erred, is due for sanction (or will be due, once all the facts are known). Nor is it necessarily with your assessment of their errors. The brutal truth is, though, we do not yet know all the facts, and the process for finding those facts has been derived over time and proven more reliable than short cuts. It's about the process. And that's for the sake not just of a decent and reasonable result for crew (and other involved parties, if any), it's also about two other factors. (AerocatS2A in #671 seemed to be making a similar kind of point.)
2. No one taking the time to write posts on this forum (posts of any seriousness, that is) fails to hold a strong desire to know the WHY: why did this sequence of events, acts and omissions, take place, and how did it all take place, as exactly as possibly determined afterwards. But preliminary - or less nicely, half-baked - conclusions about responsibility based on a very early stage of factual development strikes this poster as a good way to interfere with defining and understanding the why and the how.
3. And then there's the "what needs to be changed" discussion. One can anticipate the NTSB issuing a pretty lengthy list of stuff that needs to be changed (probably some pretty complex stuff, too). Again, premature conclusory assertions as to crew culpability and the clarity with which they deserve to be tarred and keel-hauled is a good way to interfere with attaining the necessary clarity about system modifications and the broad understandings needed to restructure system elements, if any need to be restructured (like approach airspace architecture, and runway and taxiway lighting, just to name two candidates).
4. I really don't think reference to an aviator who "drove it into the mountain" adds much here, underfire. But, it's free expression.
5. Once upon a time, a lawyer had a case in which a client had re-enacted an alleged safety violation (not involving airliners, alas). The re-enactment went very well, so the lawyer was told, in establishing the wrong-doing of the dismissed employee. Ah, but the notes taken by some of the participants....which led to the lawyerly wisdom, "you think I'm putting words in someone's mouth? Actually, they teach that art, in law school - take the course in Evidence and find out!"