4 ms·

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.