Whenever a crash is put down to pilot error you often hear critics say that it “blame the dead guy”. An example would be the Air France crash of a few years ago.
Do you think that investigators rush to a finding of pilot error too easily?
Agghh. Damn mobile. Should read blame the dead guy. Could a mod fix it?
First of all, I reported this thread so that a mod could clean up the title, as per your request.
Second, I think “pilot error” is a quick, deflecting way of potentially avoiding lawsuits. If the airline can blame it on a human error, it can sometimes sound better than “our airplane fucked up.” In baseball, a misplay can be scored an “error.” There are 2 kinds of errors: physical errors and mental ones. Managers and coaches work with players. They know that physical errors are going to happen. It’s just the way humans are wired. The coaches try to get the players to avoid the mental errors (missing a cut-off man, throwing to the wrong base etc). Seems like a comparable situation to me, overall.
I suppose one way to approach this is to compare cases where the FAA investigated crashes where the pilot survived, and see if they return “pilot error” as often as they do when the pilot isn’t around to defend himself.
I think airlines, manufacturers, and service/repair facilities might be happy to put all blame on pilot error.
I doubt that the NTSB has any such motive. If they fail to report a mechanical or electronic error, they are liable to have to come out and do the investigation all over again when the next one goes down.
Are there any reports or any evidence of pressure being brought to bear on the NTSB (or similar authorities in other countries), by the airlines, manufacturers, and service/repair companies?
Boeing’s recent fire problems were not blamed on pilots.
In the Gimli Glider incident, Air Canada was quick to blame the pilots, but the Aviation Safety Board of Canada threw the blame back on the airline.
Given the number of judgments that pilots have to make throughout a flight, (and before it), human error is probably going to be the largest contributor to problems and it is likely that a pair of guys in a cockpit facing numerous decisions are more likely to make such errors than mechanics doing routine things day after day. Similarly, the engineers and designers go through a long period of analysis and testing before a specific model gets certified, so their human errors tend to be exposed before the plane is filled with passengers or cargo and sent off into the sky. This is not a criticism of pilots, but a recognition of reality.
In furtherance of what tomndebb said. Most maintenance of aircrafts are covered by air-worthiness directives. Nearly every piece on the aircraft is governed by the number of flight hours flown and have mandated times for removal/replacement. Examination of the exterior of the plane is likewise governed by the number of flight hours flown.
Even “pilot error” is not a “get out of criticism free” card. The airlines trained the pilot, after all.
And questions about “why did the pilot make this error?” often lead back to the design of the controls, like the side-stick in the AF447 crash that let one pilot make a serious error without the other pilot being able to see what he was doing, much less correct him.
Actually, the NTSB quite frequently blames surviving pilots.
The reason ‘pilot error’ is called so often is that it’s the leading factor in aviation crashes. I don’t recall reading any NTSB reports that said ‘CAUSE OF CRASH: PILOT ERROR’. I see under PROBABLE CAUSE such things as ‘Pilot failed to perform adequate preflight inspection’ or ‘Pilot failed to ensure sufficient fuel for the flight’ or ‘VFR pilot continued flight into IMC’ or ‘Pilot failed to maintain adequate separation between the aircraft and the ground’. (OK, just kidding about that last one.) The point is that they don’t just say the pilot screwed the pooch. They specify exactly what the pilot did (as well as can be determined) to cause the crash.
As others have said, aircraft are very well maintained and things seldom break. On the other hand, pilots possess a range of experience and sometimes make mistakes. Sometimes tragic mistakes. For example, JFK Jr. flew into conditions he was not fully trained to handle. He became disoriented and crashed. The pilots of that TransAsia turboprop secured the wrong engine. In the latter case, the failed engine was clearly a contributing factor to the crash; but it was pilot error that killed everyone.
This is from the NTSB report on TWA 800:
Warning - 341 page PDF
From page 308
They blamed Boeing for the design and the FAA for certifying it.
Yes, there was a shitstorm oer the report.
If you’re talking about the crash in the Atlantic, that went missing for a year or so, then yes, it’s clearly pilot error. The pilot failed to recognize that the aircraft was stalled and react accordingly. Major pilot error.
I firmly believe that those accidents that are labeled pilot error have been done so responsibly.
In reality, the pilot* is* responsible for making sure that the correct amount of fuel for the flight is loaded. Those pilots did an excellent job flying thereafter, but regardless of the finding, they totally blew it not insuring that the aircraft was fueled correctly. (It was fueled in liters instead of gallons, and no one caught the error)
I may be in error on the liter/gallon thing, but it was a metric conversion error that resulted in less fuel than necessary. That math stuff is everywhere.
Interesting theory. Too bad for that theory it’s not the airlines that make the determination. It’s an actual government investigative agency.
Also the aircraft’s and its manufacturer’s insurance companies, both of which have a vested interest coupled with a *very *strong professional compunction not to shell out a brass farthing if they can help it. Which means that any crash is a game between the aircraft’s insurer and the airline, both deploying humourless specialists armed with fine tooth combs and tasked with proving incontrovertibly that it’s all the other team’s fault and liability. Which in turn provides a very strong basis for knowing what factually happened, and often also why.
(full disclosure : my dad’s a crash investigator for one such company, so while I can’t boast personal expertise in these matters I have spent many a boring-ass dinner listening to the minute details of most investigations of one who can. It’s better than being abused, but not by much :D).
Pilot error also to me seems to encompass a while range of actions, from “forgot to extend landing gear” to “failed to see mountain because the weather was poor and the terrain system did not tell him anything”.
While I do not think that the pilots of the Gimli Glider are free of responsibility, the salient points of the investigation:
It was a genuine clusterfuck of errors, with both flight crew and ground crew contributing, but the investigators declined to blame the entire incident on the pilots.
Except that in the Air France 447 crash it actually was the dead pilot’s fault.
You don’t pull back on the stick during a stall.
I don’t think investigators use “pilot error” as a catch-all cause if they can’t find any other reason. They specifically say what the error was, “Instead of setting fuel tank selector to ‘both’, pilot set selector to ‘off’”.
Here’s the five most common reasons for airplane crashes … a dubious website perhaps but half due to pilot error is consistent with my understanding of the matter …
I used to watch this tv series, Air Disasters, and most of the causes of the crash seem to have been due to pilot error, so I’m not surprised when I read NTBS come out with its findings - pilot error.
Maybe one day we can substitute the human for a robot and then this problem will be solved. 
In my industry, no root cause investigation stops at Human Error. The next step is determining the contributing factors to the human error - inadequate training, inaccurate or ambiguous instruction, some type of fatigue, poor design, failure to communicate critical information, etc. Then a plan to minimize the underlying cause(s) is required.
However, I admit the design control on humans sucks, and I’ve never seen a good IQ/OQ/PQ protocol for one. Maybe they are the part in the system most prone to failure now, after decades (a century?) of on going safety improvements in the aircraft themselves and the support systems.