I'd wager that pilots, like any other professionals, make mistakes all the time. This, however, is mitigated by a regulatory, technological and cultural safety

I'd wager that pilots, like any other professionals, make mistakes all the time. This, however, is mitigated by a regulatory, technological and cultural safety net, which usually corrects such mistakes. For example: There's an important cultural understanding that pilots admit safety relevant issues, even if they made a mistake in the process and not getting punished for it. The effect is that all involved entities learn from that and correct it in the future. When something really bad happens pilot error is mostly part of the puzzle, but the bad outcome is a sequence of problems, which lead to catastrophy. A great example is the worst disaster in civil aviation history ever[1], which ultimately was triggered by the error of a very experienced pilot. But there were a lot of small puzzle pieces, which needed to fall into place for this catastrophy to happen. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenerife_airport_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenerife_airport_disaster edit : spello