CatYaaak said:
I don't believe it's always the pilots fault. I believe the NTSB does a great job and absolutely; human factors contribute greatly to accidents as they determine by them, and in this day and age of reliabilty play a much larger role than equipment failures, etc. I believe that things like bad Mx, management, etc, can and do become factors in accidents. I think that sometimes mechanical things come unglued and have seen ATC screwing up to the point where blind luck prevented a disaster. The ALPA report I cited ran counter to these "human factor" findings of the NTSB, however, in order to exonerate their own.
Maybe we're not really differing, just using each others posts to make our own points. I don't think that you understand what I've been saying. That would be my fault.
If "back in the day" you got pressured to land somewhere you knew you shouldn't and ended up in a pile of metal, well that's your own fault, not your ignorant boss's.
Cat, seriously, you must not have read my first post real well. Here it is again.
enigma said:
With that said, Stuff like this is one of the reasons I left corporate flying. What in the world was a Hendrick aircraft doing with a VFR gps? I'm pretty certain that Jeff Gordon gets the best equipment that Rick Hendricks' money can buy for his car, yet Hendrick is flying himself and his family around in an airplane that does not have the best equipment. What's up with that? How could the aviation department manager NOT equip the aircraft with at LEAST an IFR certified GPS?
I can only surmise that most corporate aviation department managers are yes men. Men who are more concerned with their own stature with the boss, than they are concerned with the safety of their pax. I've seen it first hand. These people want to be seen as someone who can "get the job done", and would rather operate on the negative side of safe than they would go to the boss and say, "Boss, It takes money to run this department. I need to spend X number of dollars to intstall the latest nav equipment and that equipment is essential to safe flight. We either install it, or limit our flying to conditions that do not require instrument navigation". Instead, they roll the dice and peoples lives hang in the balance.
Does anyone think that Rick Hendrick would pay $50G's to keep his brother, son, and nieces alive? I bet he would. I also bet the he wishes that his aviation guy had informed him that they needed better equipment and the training to properly us it.
God bless the families of those who died on the alter of cheap operations.
Clearly, I am refering to corporate aviation department managers, those so called, chief Pilots.
No matter what his emotional state at the time, you're being paid to act and decide things as the flying professional, not him. Flying is your venue, not his. I'm glad you got over your weakness, but you're wrong about him being partially responsible.
Again, I am specifically refering to management pilots, not aircraft owners.
Whitewashing basic piloting errors and decisions we make by blaming everything else runs counterproductive to safety, and finding and studying contributing factors, for us, should serve to help us recognize when WE are prone to errors in judgement or skill, or recognize when we're in the middle of a chain of events (caused by us or someone else is irrelevant at that moment) leading to potential disaster.
Who's trying to whitewash "basic piloting errors"?
Sometimes technology makes this problem of losing the big picture worse. In the Cali incident, before plugging in the wrong fix and long before relaizing they were lost, the flight crew accepting a direct routing off the airway (which didn't really mean a shortcut anyway) while at the same time beginning a descent into mountainous terrain below probably lowered their SA because on their FMS screen would have wiped out the routing on the flight plan which included the reporting point they got confused if they had passed or not. Raw data SA was obviously not there, and the snowball got bigger by accepting straight in approach meaning steeper descent, etc. etc. Charlie Foxtrot.
I asked why the most successful race team in the nation, doesn't equip it's aircraft with an IFR certified GPS, and somehow you use it as a way to show that technology is somehow bad. I don't really see how Cali relates to a discussion of why they were flying with a VFR nav box.
Loss of SA can happen to anyone for many reasons. Rarely, however, does it happen to BOTH pilots in a two-person crew without at least one of them realizing something is amiss, even if they don't know exactly what that something is. If it happens at altitude it's embarrasing and might cost you a beer or a violation or perhaps your job until things get sorted out...but everyone lives. If the loss of SA happens while descending, HUGE friggin' alarm bells should be going off in at least one person's head because it's usually fatal if things continue towards terra firma. The DOMAIN where these alarm bells go off, how easily they are vocalized, and how to respond to them is the pilot's, no matter what got you to that point.
We're paid to remember these basics, especially when workload is high or conditions not severe clear daytime. The reason there has been such an effort to counter CFIT accidents involving perfectly good airplanes in the recent years is because unlike things like rudder-hardovers, in many cases it's the basics that get us in trouble. Shooting approaches is basic to what we do. Unfortunately, it seems that we must re-learn them all the time and IMO things like an self-serving ALPA "official" findings that ignores these basics only creates and re-inforces the notion that nothing can ever be a pilot's fault even if they disregard them. Attitude, more than anything else, determines the level of safety of any flight.
I'm looking at finding a cause for poor performances that lead up to accidents, and you're looking to show that the after accident spin is incorrect.
Pilots ARE ultimately responsible, and would be better off if we concern ourselves with the basics. Unfortunately, some corporate pilots are also worrying about: limos, rent cars, catering, fuel pricing, or when they'll get time to clean up the mess that the pax left.
I'll leave you with this. You're right. Pilots should be able to accomplish basic IFR operations without the help of geewhiz computer nav boxes.
I'm right that there is no excuse for a high dollar operator to load his family up into less than the best.
Now that I've got that out of the way, Why did they not have IFR certified equipment, and who made that decision?
enigma
PS, my first post was written during a time of frustration after the realization that ten people died in an airplane possibly ill equiped to do the job. I was a little too hasty in directly lumping the Hendrick Motorsports Aviation manager into the group of yes men. My sincere apologies to those people.
