"A punishment model is rarely the optimum method for imparting knowledge. Motivated professions learn much better when they seek to understand weaknesses in themselves and the system. A disciplinarian view of the world discourages this type of true evaluation in my experience."
To those seeking discipline in this event, read the above--it describes how aviation became the safest means of transporting us around.
There is a marked difference between seeking only disciplinary actions, mainly called punitive leadership, and doing all the seeking “why” and learning from an incident, while still holding the crew responsible.
I get the impression that the discussion on here goes too much in the direction of either/or.
Insinuating that those calling to hold the crew responsible for the incident only wanting to hang them, is calling the wrong shot. No one wants to crucify them, but we should acknowledge that they mad a grave mistake. Notwithstanding that there were contributing factors, we are in the cockpits to ensure safe flight and not to screw-up – point à la ligne!
We can then go and do the soul searching about the "whys and how comes".
By doing this, we can then assist and help the concerned crew by pointing relentlessly to all the enemy factors we know so well. Simultaneously we should not let only accident boards, regulators, airlines and manufacturers go ahead with the inquiries and verdicts. We all know that therein lies the main problem: Collusion and corruption. In the name of the holy profit, too many interest groups and their beancounters go ahead with cutting all corners in assessments, training and equipment/tools for all the professionals involved in civil aviation. It makes our job more difficult and leaves access to too many ill-suited participants, which then makes the system more incident prone than necessary. Accident reports are more often than not very partially executed and their outcome is most often a lip service to safety, but a huge service to the aforementioned with new but mainly useless regulations and more gadgets for the industry to sell inflated to the taxpayer and airlines with little or no effect. It however definitely costs more than a better assessing and much better training of the aspiring young future employees.
In dollars and human losses.