Exactly! So, in the interest of meaningful safety discussions, let us dispense with the question of age. We should not be focusing on the age of the mishap crew. We should be zeroing in on what a pathetic display of airmanship took place and much more importantly, what latent organizational pathogens existed that allowed this set of killing conditions to "do in" these two young men.
Like you, I spent a considerable amount of time going over the CVR transcripts. My guess is where you saw young, I saw stupid. The biggest impression that I got was that these gentlemen were lacking in a couple of key areas of airmanship. Their lack of knowledge and flight discipline allowed their judgement and situational awareness to falter to the point where the Captain left a brand new "sparky" in the cockpit at FL410, ISA and a bunch, less than 200KIAS in a swept wing jet. Was he fighting a cabin fire? Nope, getting a soft drink. Then when, as you say, the preverbial flame thrower started burning them, they absolutely did not step up to the plate in terms of any meaningful communication, timely action and plain simple aviating.
I think Pinnacle has a lot to answer for in regards to turning loose two drivers who had no concept of high altitude/low speed issues. You also have to scrutinize a culture where pilots are allowed to think that leaving a junior FO alone on the flight deck is anything but unacceptable and negligent.
We all take the same checkrides. Plus or minus 100', 10 degrees and ten knots. Show up sober, pass the physical, don't bend the airplane. And yet we still continue to kill ourselves and our passengers needlessly. Some of us have taken the extra step. Some of us know what 7110.65 is and have even read it. A few people on the board know what a 40:1 OIS means to us in terms of performance. Yet over 100 years after the first powered flight, there is no published standard for what airmanship entails. Everyone reading this post that hasn't done so has the opportunity to do some careful self-assement of where they stand as an aviator, and start working on their weak areas. The more you work on airmanship, the weaker you realize you are. Unfortunately, few do. Instead they focus on what the mishap crew did. ("Boy, I'll never do that!")
Even worse, whenever there's a loss of life, investigating organizations still focus on the flight crew instead of killing off the organational failures that allow the pilots to make the final error.
"It's beyond belief that a professional air crew would act in that manner," said Thomas Palmer, former manager of Pinnacle's training program for that model of jet.
So Thomas, what's your responsibility here? You can't babysit the crewforce every flight, but are we to believe this was just a rogue crew and that the Pinnacle culture didn't contribute at all?
At any rate TIS, it's nice to see you posting again after so many years. We should get together sometime over dinner and talk TERPS.
