PM,
”Saying the button didn't work as advertised when alternative means were available but not used is not really acceptable”.
Many pilots would agree with that view; I would also agree providing the situation is considered and stated, place the activity in context.
Over the years aviation has changed dramatically with increasingly complex operational situations and technology, yet the human has not changed. The industry appears to be approaching the limits of human effectiveness, particularly with decreasing opportunity to gain experience - learning on the job.
Thus it is even more important to consider what we might expect of human performance in specific situations, and if we judge that unacceptable, then action is required to alleviate the human limitation (automation, decision aiding, annunciation) or protect them from the situation (system operating logic).
More often this judgment is made by pilots, particularly in this forum. We harshly judge ourselves, especially when we know the outcome of accidents; we conclude (with subconscious hindsight bias) that ‘we would not make that mistake’, and thus expect others to act similarly.
We are our worst enemies; we have grown up with the changes which we may not have noticed, and overtime gained experiences well beyond that which might be found today.
In order to judge - comment, we must identify what has changed, systems and situations, and then consider the effect of these in limiting human performance.
It's not where the line of judgement is drawn, but who makes that judgement. Look to management, regulator, and manufacturer, but first look to ourselves.
Compare with
http://www.pprune.org/safety-crm-qa-...ml#post9853313
cessnap..,
”Crews are loosing the ability to instinctively back up with the 'pilot stuff'.”
I agree, but why blame individuals if they are trained or encouraged to think otherwise, or are unable to achieve a level of experience or confidence to do something which deviates from SOPs.
This accident highlights the limitations of an SOP mentality (depends on the identification of all possible situations); what do you do if the expected changes do not occur; seek an alternative published SOP, or an unpublished ‘airmanship’ SOP ?
RAT
but what happens if the brain has never been in the situation before, or even biased not to think about these situations.