Comair Pilot Error

"Peter Duniho" wrote

My point is that "what we know so far" is precious little, and hardly
enough
to justify any anger.

Anger, and a person's reasons for becoming angry, is a very personal,
experience driven reaction.

I would suggest that you accept and respect other's anger, produced in
reaction to the incident, and that others respect your need to withhold
feelings of anger in reaction to the incident.

Nobody is going to change the other's mind in this case. Best to respect,
accept, and move along.
--
Jim in NC

Andrew Andrew Andrew...surely you jest. Fatigue is a really big factor in
many accidents. The work loads on t/o VFR or not is high necessitating "a
sterile cockpit" in the ops manual. That is there for a reason...that's
right to prevent mistakes. If you have ever ridden jump seat, you would know
that the atmosphere in the cockpit is different with a jump seater...those
that have, know what I mean...I am not speculating what went wrong but my
bet would be fatigue, and maybe even distraction.


"Andrew Sarangan" wrote in message
oups.com...
I am getting tired of comments like "controller should have warned the
pilots", or "taxiway was confusing", or "runway lights were off" etc..
One could not find a better example of a pure and simple pilot error.
The runway was clear, the weather was VFR, and the airplane was working
fine. It is highly likely that this was the only airplane maneuvering
at the airport. Even if the controller had cleared him to takeoff on
runway 26, the responsibility would have been on the pilot to decline
that clearance. Yet, a perfectly good airplane was run off the runway
and ploughed into the woods.

NTSB is investigating whether the pilots had coffee that morning, and
how much sleep they got. This is a futile exercise. Taxiing and
departing from a relatively quiet airport under VFR conditions is an
extremely low workload situation. We are not talking about shooting a
non-precision approach to minimums in a thunderstorm after a full day
of flying. A pilot should be able to do this even if he had partied all
night at the bar. What happened was gross negligence.

I shudder to think that my wife and baby flew the Comair CRJ only a few
days prior to this accident. Fortunately they are flying back with me
in our trusty GA airplane. I feel a lot better about it than trusting
my family to stupid mistakes that even my students pilots know how to
avoid. I sincerely feel for those who lost loved ones. They have the
right be very angry. I am angry, and I did not lose anything.

We are not talking about shooting a
non-precision approach to minimums in a thunderstorm after a full day
of flying. A pilot should be able to do this even if he had partied all
night at the bar. What happened was gross negligence.



How's the view from in there?

HuH ???

"Ron Lee" wrote in message
...
[...] Do you get angry at every
error a human makes? If not, what's your threshold and why do you think
that you are justified in getting angry at these particular humans for
this
particular error in this particular case?

49 deaths?

We have nearly 50,000 deaths on our highways every year. Shouldn't you be
angry about that first? Shouldn't you be 1000 times more angry about that?

Personally, I don't see deaths in and of itself justification for anger.
Disappointment, yes. Dismay even, sure. But anger? What a waste of a
perfectly useful emotion. The number of deaths isn't relevant...what's
relevant is why those deaths occurred, and that information isn't available
yet.

Pete

"Ron Lee" wrote in message
...
We don't know what mistake was made here.

Sure we do. They took off from a runway that was too short for their
aircraft.

That is only the "final" and most obvious mistake. It doesn't answer the
question of WHY that mistake was made.

And I put "final" in quotes because if you want to get technical about it,
the actual final mistake was crashing the airplane. In a lot of aircraft
accidents, the final mistake is crashing the airplane. But thankfully, the
NTSB goes a little farther in their investigations than saying "probable
cause: the airplane struck the ground in a manner inconsistent with a
survivable landing".

Pete

Visual perspective determines whether the pilot "sees" that
they are high, low, short or long.

Very long runways appear narrow, very wide runways appear
shorter.



"Andrew Gideon" wrote in message
news | On Tue, 29 Aug 2006 13:25:02 +0000, John Theune wrote:
|
| Also, for
| a 3500 foot runway 75 is more then enough.
|
| I've never considered the ratio between runway length and
width before.
| What is it that defines possible values for this ratio?
The given width
| and length required for specific aircraft? Something
else?
|
| - Andrew
|

"Andrew Sarangan" wrote in message
oups.com...
I think you are taking the phrase "angry" to an extreme. It is not that
I am sitting here pounding my fist on the table and crying for revenge.
I am angry that the pilots were so careless and took so many innocent
lives with them.

Equivocate all you want...your post expresses more than just a general
feeling of angry resentment, and the use of term "gross negligence" goes way
beyond anything anyone has learned yet.

[...] When 50 people die, I call it gross negligence.

Then you are ignorant of the correct use of the term.

I am not a lawyer, so may be there is a deeper meaning to
"gross" than what I am aware of.

"Gross negligence" has a very specific meaning. If you use it for other
than that meaning, you are in error. Here is one example of the dictionary
definiton for "gross negligence" (from Webster's):

an extremely careless action or an omission that is willful
or reckless disregard for the consequences to the safety or
property of another; also called very great negligence,
culpa lata

If that is not what you mean, then you should not be using the term.

Yes, most aircraft accidents are due to human error. Aircraft is a
machine built by humans. When it fails how could it not be human error?

Lots of mechanical failures are due simply to normal wear. And there's a
wide variety of normal wear that is either simply impossible to detect
during any normal inspection of the airplane, or which occurs after a proper
inspection was done and was not detectable at that inspection.

It is just as ignorant to claim that ALL mechanical failures are due to
human error as it is to claim that there is enough information in this
accident to judge the pilots grossly negligent.

The difference is, some errors are simple and clear and be traced to
one or two individuals, while other errors are more complex,
intertwined and involves many thousands of people. We often equate the
former as human error and the latter as policy failures. But
ultimately humans are responsbile for all our errors.

But not all accidents are caused by human error.

Perhaps I am being naiive, but I have experienced fatigue due to lack
of sleep and long flights in IMC. When that happens, I make a
deliberate attempt to check, double check and triple check everything.
When I know I am vulnerable, I take the obvious steps to prevent a
mishap.

You have no reason to claim that these pilots did not do exactly that. Even
as a person may recognize their reduced performance and may take steps to
attempt to mitigate that reduced performance, fatigue may prevent them from
recognizing that the steps they have taken did not prevent a mistake.

Beyond that, you seem to *really* be too focused on the individual
possibilities. The very fact that you see a need to argue against each
hypothetical is proof positive that you are jumping to conclusions. If you
had enough information to fairly judge the pilots, you could explain to all
of us exactly what happened.

You don't have that information, so you're left trying to fight off each
possible explanation one at a time. Even if you successfully argue against
a possibility (and you haven't so far), the fact remains that you have NO
IDEA what happened, and are not in a position to fairly judge whether the
pilots acted in a grossly negligent (or even plainly negligent) manner.

The most you can say is that they made a mistake. You have no idea why they
made that mistake, and you cannot even claim that you would not have made
the exact same mistake in the exact same situation.

[...]
Perhaps you should avoid flying when it's dark then. You don't seem to
have
the proper respect for the reality of the situation.

That is a pretty cheap shot.

Why? You're the one saying that it's not harder to see when it's dark. I
think most of us recognize the reality that it's harder to see when it's
dark. Your claim is exactly opposite from how most of us understand
darkness. I simply pointed that out.

Night flying is harsher than day, but not
because you can't see the end of the runway.

No one (except perhaps you) is saying that seeing the end of the runway
would have prevented this accident. So what's your point?

Certain things are easier
to see at night than day, and runway lights is one of them, especially
when you are lined with it.

So the pilots saw the runway lights? How would that have helped them avoid
the accident? Are you claiming that they DID see the runway lights, and
that the runway lights DID provide unmistakable evidence that they were on
the wrong runway, and that they DID ignore that unmistakable evidence? And
if you aren't saying that, then why do you bring up the question of seeing
the runway lights?

Other things are harder to see at night,
like clouds, emergency landing sites and small print on charts. But
those are not what we are talking about here.

What we're talking about here is the fact that when it's dark, it's harder
to see things, especially those things that would have made it easier for
the pilots to recognize that they were in the wrong place.

Pete

"Ron Lee" wrote in message
...
I agree that there is enough info known to establish that the pilots
screwed up and many people died. Anger or specific legal definitions
are not worth quibbling over.

And yet you do quibble. Odd.

If there is the possibility that information you don't yet have would
change
your mind, then by definition your current opinion is premature.

I don't think so. I just leave open the possibility (rare that it is)
that I am wrong.

You have an odd way of looking at things (though that was already
apparent...see above). You specifically say that you don't have enough
information to know for sure that you aren't wrong, and yet you feel your
current judgment of the situation isn't premature?

Why? What possible justification do you have for claiming this is gross
negligence?

I am not a lawyer but what would you call it when someone screws up
and 49 people die?

An accident. Get a dictionary and look up "gross negligence". It has a
very specific meaning, and the simple act of causing ANY number of people to
die is not part of the definition.

Some want to know about how much sleep they got, whether they had
coffee, etc but those points are irrelevant. You have two
professional pilots who screwed up. 49 people died.

Yup, those are pretty much the facts we know. So which of those facts
justify your judgment of "gross negligence"?

Pete

Grumman-581 wrote:
On Tue, 29 Aug 2006 10:50:23 -0700, "Peter Duniho"
wrote:

Define "looking good". I think it goes without saying that pilots who take
off from the wrong runway made a mistake. It's certainly pilot error.
There's no question about that. But was their error a blatantly
irresponsible act? There's absolutely no evidence that it was.


Which brings up a good question... If the NTSB report does finally
confirm that it was in fact pilot error and if the pilot who is
current in the hospital survives, what are his likely career
consequences? Is it completely down the tubes or is there a chance
that he might still remain working as an ATP? I suspect that up until
he saw the fence, he was *positive* that he was on the right runway...
Of course, soon after seeing the fence, he comment was probably
something like, "Oh ****..."...

Interesting question. I suspect he'll have a tough time finding a seat
again, but, personally, I don't think this should be the case assuming
it was purely a mistake and there wasn't any irresponsbile actions taken
prior. It reminds me of an anecdote about Tom Watson (I have no idea of
this is fact or fiction, but I've read it several times) and one of the
early IBM employees. Apparently the employee really screwed up
something that cost IBM several million dollars and was called into
Tom's office expecting to be fired. When Tom didn't fire him the
employee inquired as to why he wasn't fired. Supposedly, Tom's response
was that he couldn't afford to fire the guy as he's just invested
several million dollars into his education!

I suspect this pilot, assuming he recovers sufficiently to maintain his
medical, would be one of the most careful pilots on the line in the
future. For that reason, I'd vote to give him another chance.

Matt

Ron Lee wrote:

Grumman-581 wrote:


On Tue, 29 Aug 2006 10:50:23 -0700, "Peter Duniho"
wrote:

Define "looking good". I think it goes without saying that pilots who take
off from the wrong runway made a mistake. It's certainly pilot error.
There's no question about that. But was their error a blatantly
irresponsible act? There's absolutely no evidence that it was.

Which brings up a good question... If the NTSB report does finally
confirm that it was in fact pilot error and if the pilot who is
current in the hospital survives, what are his likely career
consequences? Is it completely down the tubes or is there a chance
that he might still remain working as an ATP? I suspect that up until
he saw the fence, he was *positive* that he was on the right runway...
Of course, soon after seeing the fence, he comment was probably
something like, "Oh ****..."...


If he still flies let me know so I can avoid that airline. Or at
least any plane he is piloting.

Why do you say that not yet knowing all of the details? If you decide
you won't fly with any pilot who has made a mistake, then you won't be
flying.

Matt