Question about consequences

[glen4cindy]

Hello. I am a very avid aviation enthusiast, and I really enjoy learning everything I can about flying and such, and one of my favorite parts of aviation is following and learning about the various accident investigations and everything we have learned from the various accidents that have occured in commercial aviation.

I have always come away from these investigations with a really big question, however. In cases where there isn't complete loss of life, and where the pilots have not been at the mercy of equipment failure, such as in the Continental Airlines Flight 1943 Wheels-Up landing where the NTSB found that various things the pilots did or didn't do led to them not realizing soon enough that hydraulic power wasn't available to deploy the landing gear and flaps, which led to a wheels-up landing causing substantial damage to the aircraft, and probably the runway......

What happens to a pilot in these cases? Does the airline and the FAA side with the NTSB, when the NTSB claims "pilot error"? Does the pilot lose his job, license, rating, or some other such thing? Or, is he placed on suspension for a peroid of time, probation, remedial training, or something?

I'm sure, that all too often the NTSB blames the pilots when it may not actually be the fault of the pilots. I'm not so ready to always place blame there. But, I have always been curious.

Or, say in these runway overruns such as the one that just happened in April at Midway on a Southwest Airlines aircraft. If memory serves, this is the 3rd time that a Southwest Airlines aircraft has had a runway overrun accident. 2 at Midway and 1 at Burbank, CA.

Thanks in advance for the feedback.

[glen4cindy]

No ideas on this?

Where would be a good place to ask this question?

I only ask because I am curious.

Thanks.

[Hamrah]

Hey Glen,

you deserve a little insight.

Any accident is the result of a series of " failures" coming together at a critical moment. We call it the swiss cheese effect. When the holes in the cheese line up, things go critically wrong.

Pilots usually come under the most scrutiny because they are the first people at the scene of the accident.

If you get to watch any of the Air Crash Investigation series on National Geographic channel, you'll get a good insight into the various factors that can lead to an aircraft accident. Sometimes it goes all the way to a poor design during aircraft manufacture ( DC10 cargo dopor being a good example)

[glen4cindy]

Thanks so much for your answer. I have watched everything I can get my hands on like that. In the USA, that show is called Air Emergency. Most if not all of those shows involve either accidents with no survivors, and several have involved accidents where pilots have been at the mercy of the machines they are flying, such as the Alaska Airlines 261 flight, where shortcuts in maintenance caused a jack screw to fail which caused loss of control of the vertical stabilizer, or should I say a large piece of it came off as well....

I have also learned from watching them and from reading the NTSB accident reports that it is not just one thing that causes accidents, but, a series of things that leads to the accident.

In the example I gave in my first question, the capiain ommited "hydraulics" from the checklist, and the FO didn't realize he missed it, therefore, they both did not realize that hydraulic pressure was not available for key systems. Right there is a series of events.

The captain and FO did not adhere to sterile cockpit rules, which led to neither of them realizing that the flaps were in the wrong position.

They failed to perform the landing checklist, which again would have alerted them to the airplane not being in proper configuration for landing.

I was not there, but, it would seem that at some point the GPWS should have started "saying" things like "too low flaps, too low gear" or something to that effect.

With the above items in mind, seeing how things were clearly left out of proper procedure, what position do the airlines take with pilots when these things happen? Do they accept what the NTSB says at face value? Just curious. When I follow the investigations myself for personal interest, I only have the resources that are made public. I would assume the airlines have access to more information than is made public.

Thanks in advance.