It is. I’m half-expecting some of my other aviation youtubers to put something out soon as well. I think Chloe/Disaster Breakdown could do a really good job with it as well.
While that video lays out the “what happened” part well I think the more important part is he notes how the airline industry does not deal with mental health problems of its pilots and other staff well.
The problem is pilots can easily lose their career if they seek mental health treatment (especially if they need medication) and it can be difficult to impossible to get back to flying. So, they are incentivized to not seek treatment if they are having problems which can lead to something like this happening.
Not an easy problem to resolve.
Some carriers are trying real hard to be proactive. Others are behind the times. But as you say, the Feds are the rate-limiting step here. Until they are on board with not killing careers, the fear will be there.
Another approach of course is to carry full career earnings replacement insurance. But that’s darn expensive and also prone to fraudulent claims.
Is that a specifically american problem or is it a global one (the whole stepping-into-a-world-of-hurt when admitting mental problems)
IOW, are there countries that are more progressive than others? (my kneejerk reaction is NO, b/c what would a progressive country do when being serviced by a US airline/pilot, so it has to be a pretty much global standard, right?)
Broad brush you nailed it. The various countries are free to set their own standards but there are international bodies to tsk-tsk anyone getting too far away from the current herd concensus.
Separately their mandate is not career continuity but opwrating safety. We are in the Dark Ages of psychology / psychiatry.
Nobody wants a sick pilot. Nobody wants to pay a sick pilot to stay home. No pilot wants to stay home for life unpaid.
It’s a barbed-wire Iron Triangle.
Bumping this to share that there is a documentary coming out on Friday about this case. It will be on FX on Friday (8/23) and streaming on Hulu starting the next day.