5 ms·

I agree completely that we tend to focus too much on punishment rather than preventing future harm. That said, one thing that makes the airline industry unique

by ksdale 11y ago

I agree completely that we tend to focus too much on punishment rather than preventing future harm. That said, one thing that makes the airline industry unique is the binary nature of problems. If something goes wrong and the plane doesn't crash, then there's no harm to passengers so it's easier to forgo punishment. If something goes wrong and the plane crashes, there's no one left alive to punish. Add to that the fact that there is no possible nefarious reason for a pilot to accidentally crash a plane. A pilot can crash a plane on purpose, but if they do something stupid and the plane doesn't crash, they're likely to be believed when they say it was just a stupid mistake. Compare to a doctor who doesn't suffer when a patient suffers (at least not physically) and in fact may even save money from certain oversights. It's much easier to assume bad intent where mistakes are profitable rather than fatal.

wnevets 11y ago
Pilots aren't the only ones who can make a deadly mistake in aviation. If a traffic controller or maintenance personnel makes a mistake, are they punished?
- Retric 11y ago
  Sometimes, it depends on who notices the mistake and why. Consider, a safety first culture can easily penalize someone for showing up to work drunk IF someone notices before a problem shows up. But, if nobody notices till after the fact then they should be free to admit it without problems. Because there where two issues, they where drunk AND nobody noticed. You can't fix the second issue if you don't know it's a problem.
- sokoloff 11y ago
  Absolutely, especially in the case of ATC. Now, the punishment is often "merely" decertification to work their position and re-training (with pay) until they're fully certified to work their position again, but it's still a pretty big deal to the ATCers I know. Maintenance personnel can also have their certificates suspended, though that tends to be more rare than being sued. (ATC is prevented from being sued in almost all circumstances, so that doesn't apply to them.) You can be sure that most fatal crashes result in at least an investigation of logbooks, who signed off the aircraft and for what, and some utterly absurd civil cases, many of which are settled without regard to the facts of the case but based on the perceived depth of pocket of the defendant.
paol 11y ago
You're right that there's a natural alignment of incentives between pilots and their passengers, but as wnevets points out above there are other critical participants in the system that aren't travelling in the plane. Your "binary nature of problems" comment is wrong though. First common misconception: statistically the most probable outcome for someone involved in an airplane crash is survival, not death [0]. Second misconception: investigations routinely happen for incidents not resulting in crashes. In fact the whole point of promoting self-reporting of incidents by pilots is so that such investigations can be conducted for incidents that would otherwise never be known. [0] https://app.ntsb.gov/doclib/safetystudies/SR0101.pdf https://app.ntsb.gov/doclib/safetystudies/SR0101.pdf
- ksdale 11y ago
  That's a very excellent point about other critical participants. I appreciate the additional information! I didn't mean to sound like I thought that people die all the time in airplane crashes, merely that the median mistake is way less likely to affect a passenger, which is a major criteria for deciding to punish in other professions. Every mistake a lawyer or doctor makes can hurt clients or patients, respectively, whereas for most mistakes a pilot makes, no one will even know they made it (except if they self report, which they do a lot as you pointed out). And then I added in the ill-advised part about dying, by which I was really trying to communicate that the really bad outcomes are so bad that punishment is the last thing on people's minds.
  - paol 11y ago
    > punishment is the last thing on people's minds I wish. Just off the top of my head, there was the swiss air traffic controller who was murdered by some relative of one of the victims of a mid-air collision [0], and the Brazilian government trying to put the surviving crew of another mid-air collision on trial [1]. Someone with better memory could surely think of more examples. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9Cberlingen_mid-air_collision https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9Cberlingen_mid-air_collis... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gol_Transportes_A%C3%A9reos_Flight_1907 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gol_Transportes_A%C3%A9reos_Fl...
Eric_WVGG 11y ago
not exactly an aviation example, but applicable: the space shuttle Challenger tragedy was not caused by pilot error.
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 11y ago
  Yes and Columbia.
deleted 11y ago
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by ksdale 11y ago

wnevets 11y ago

Pilots aren't the only ones who can make a deadly mistake in aviation. If a traffic controller or maintenance personnel makes a mistake, are they punished?

Retric 11y ago
Sometimes, it depends on who notices the mistake and why. Consider, a safety first culture can easily penalize someone for showing up to work drunk IF someone notices before a problem shows up. But, if nobody notices till after the fact then they should be free to admit it without problems. Because there where two issues, they where drunk AND nobody noticed. You can't fix the second issue if you don't know it's a problem.
sokoloff 11y ago
Absolutely, especially in the case of ATC. Now, the punishment is often "merely" decertification to work their position and re-training (with pay) until they're fully certified to work their position again, but it's still a pretty big deal to the ATCers I know. Maintenance personnel can also have their certificates suspended, though that tends to be more rare than being sued. (ATC is prevented from being sued in almost all circumstances, so that doesn't apply to them.) You can be sure that most fatal crashes result in at least an investigation of logbooks, who signed off the aircraft and for what, and some utterly absurd civil cases, many of which are settled without regard to the facts of the case but based on the perceived depth of pocket of the defendant.

paol 11y ago

You're right that there's a natural alignment of incentives between pilots and their passengers, but as wnevets points out above there are other critical participants in the system that aren't travelling in the plane. Your "binary nature of problems" comment is wrong though. First common misconception: statistically the most probable outcome for someone involved in an airplane crash is survival, not death [0]. Second misconception: investigations routinely happen for incidents not resulting in crashes. In fact the whole point of promoting self-reporting of incidents by pilots is so that such investigations can be conducted for incidents that would otherwise never be known. [0] https://app.ntsb.gov/doclib/safetystudies/SR0101.pdf https://app.ntsb.gov/doclib/safetystudies/SR0101.pdf

ksdale 11y ago
That's a very excellent point about other critical participants. I appreciate the additional information! I didn't mean to sound like I thought that people die all the time in airplane crashes, merely that the median mistake is way less likely to affect a passenger, which is a major criteria for deciding to punish in other professions. Every mistake a lawyer or doctor makes can hurt clients or patients, respectively, whereas for most mistakes a pilot makes, no one will even know they made it (except if they self report, which they do a lot as you pointed out). And then I added in the ill-advised part about dying, by which I was really trying to communicate that the really bad outcomes are so bad that punishment is the last thing on people's minds.
- paol 11y ago
  > punishment is the last thing on people's minds I wish. Just off the top of my head, there was the swiss air traffic controller who was murdered by some relative of one of the victims of a mid-air collision [0], and the Brazilian government trying to put the surviving crew of another mid-air collision on trial [1]. Someone with better memory could surely think of more examples. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9Cberlingen_mid-air_collision https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9Cberlingen_mid-air_collis... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gol_Transportes_A%C3%A9reos_Flight_1907 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gol_Transportes_A%C3%A9reos_Fl...

Eric_WVGG 11y ago

not exactly an aviation example, but applicable: the space shuttle Challenger tragedy was not caused by pilot error.

0xdeadbeefbabe 11y ago
Yes and Columbia.

deleted 11y ago

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