acaTerry said:
...should've seen it before the contract...
Anyway, I think you STILL misread the jist of my points. Try reading them like a book, not a personal attack on your disagreement with me. Perhaps if you spent some time at the regionals recently you'd see the point I and the other guys are making.
My apologies if I've misunderstood. I'll read them again.
I have nothing but respect for regional pilots who do their job day in and out with vigilance in the cockpit, always keeping their head above the underlying morass of drawbacks, difficulties, and traps that are inherent in the job which is just routine enough to where complacency can be a huge issue. It's not the tupe of flying or lifestyle I'd choose.
Vigilance is the bedrock of safety. My type of flying actually promotes vigilance through the fact at least half the places we go are unfamiliar and remote, sub-standard conditions, facilities, and disseminated info are the norm, and the feeling that sometimes it seems that half the people are trying to kill me through language barrier misunderstandings, ignorance, or sheer incompetence. Drifting into complacency in this mine-field atmosphere would probably require being shot in the head, and at least it's not insidious.
For some reason vigilance broke down here in both crewmembers. It's axiomatic that fatigue is detrimental to vigilance, decision-making, and can be insidious. This thread meandered into a general discussion of fatigue based the early departure after it was known that it wan't a scheduled stand-up. But nobody here knows yet as to whether fatigue played a role.
Not one person here accepts the notion that just because the crew was FAA-mandated "legal" on a 24 hour scheduling look-back fatigue couldn't have contributed. Neither does the NTSB.
I've made my position clear on "rolling-reserve", about any 121 company that considers it a viable scheduling scheme when only a facade of "legal rest" is maintained while the reality of the scheme actually works against being able to sleep during "rest", and my opinion of Union leaders who accept this facade by not going to the mat during negotiations to banish it from scheduled ops. But that's a theoretical discussion because although possible, we don't know yet if this crew was caught up in that scenario. The investigation will tell.
I've also offered my opinion that if given a schedule that is NOT a facade, but actually allows REAL rest to occur, it is a pilot's responsibility to use that time as it was intended while off-duty to stave off fatigue. If those conditions are met, the mere time of day for departure won't automatically induce it. This crew may have been given the time, and done exactly that.
So it's pure speculation to assume that they WERE fatigued and therefore more succeptible to distractions, changed/confused/not-charted taxiways due to construction, and the other things people have pointed out and obviously this crew had to contend with, just because it was an early flight.
Perhaps "distractions" didn't play the center-stage role at all. Maybe this crew was rested, and furthermore dealt with those distractions...taxiways, construction, darkness, whatever... competently and with attention to detail, but still unfortunately made the critical mistake. "WHY" is the question it played out as it did, and we shouldn't assume this crew was overwhelmed.
Since nothing's ruled out yet, for all anyone here knows they could have been too-relaxed. It wouldn't be the first time, and all of us especially as our experience grows are aware how this experience can be a double-edged sword. If the forthcoming realities when they're revealed include some that seem harsh to us as pilots, we HAVE to face them because nothing is harsher than the event itself.
The gist and point of what I'm saying is we shouldn't make a speculative fatigue (or any other) assumption based soley on the departure time. Because if investigation shows that fatigue issues weren't contributing, maintaining this assumption would form an innacurate causal premise that prevents focusing on and trying to find the ACTUAL reasons vigilance broke down in this particular case.
As pilots, don't we want the actual reasons in order to learn from this event and not repeat it, even if it means not being able to whip our favorite gripes? To do less would be a disservice to our profession, to the ones who perished, and our profession.
