Scudrunners

It has been a while since I posted here so lets see if I can generate a serious discussion about accountability?


The ongoing discussions in the media and on internet forums about the latest Air Canada incident in SFO has very few mentions of accountability, instead there is a constant barrage of hand wringing blaming everything on human factors pressures that clouded their vision and they just did not see anything in front or below them but they went around because it just did not look right!


My question is twofold.


First if they did not see anything how in hell did they claim it did not look right?


Second if the pilots were in command of the aircraft why are they not more accountable?

[font=Verdana][/font][quote author=Chuck Ellsworth link=topic=6947.msg18778#msg18778 date=1503458304][font=Verdana][size=15px]if the pilots were in command of the aircraft why are they not more accountable?[/font][font=Verdana][/font][/quote][font=Verdana][size=10px]
The folks in charge have a [i]very[/i] fine line to walk here.  The current safety culture at most airlines relies heavily on self-reporting with the aim of constant incremental improvement.  It can't work without crews submitting incident reports for every little thing and those reports won't flow freely unless the system is demonstrably non-punitive.  As such, a very high standard of 'innocent until proven guilty' has to be shown and even if guilty, management has to come up with a solution that doesn't make it look like pilots submitting incident reports are just ratting on themselves.


[/size][/font][quote author=Chuck Ellsworth link=topic=6947.msg18778#msg18778 date=1503458304][font=Verdana][size=12px]if they did not see anything how in hell did they claim it did not look right?[/size][/font][/quote][font=Verdana][size=10px]
Your guess is as good as mine on that one.  Could be a case of all the stars aligning and a genuine screw up, could be a scramble to cover their own butts in the aftermath (it must suck to bugger something up and make the international news), but as with most things I suspect the real answer is somewhere in the middle.  I'll put money on that answer never being public knowledge though.[/size][/font]