I suppose the request for the CVR data came in late, it’s not a device with a long recording length and overwrites itself pretty much constantly. So if the plane took off for the next flight then it was already lost to the void unfortunately.
Yep.
It’s a good argument for a more thorough logging of flightdeck activity in service of safety, although you quickly get into the expectation of privacy vs safety argument, which is understandable. I wouldn’t be too chuffed either if a hangar would be filled to the brim with camera’s and audio recording devices.
all caps intended: BULL****!
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It’s bad enough already. The aircraft I fly is FOQA compliant (Flight Operations Quality Assurance )
It is amazing how many parameters are recorded and sent in routinely for analysis. I was flagged by the system once for putting the aircraft in a bank that was 0.3º beyond what they had set as being acceptable at the altitude we were at. Now, of course, there were no repercussions from that but it shows how closely we are being monitored these days.
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“So, commander… Why did you intentionally put your aircraft into a bank that exceeded our operational limitations, by 0.3º?”
“Because 0.25º just wasn’t enough…”
Seriously though, if the 
hits the 
(best I could do) they will come after you with everything they got. It’s even got its own acronym: CLOP. Criminal Liability of Pilots.
In some parts of the world you will be thrown in jail for not being able to save a situation that couldn’t be saved.
Fortunately this is not the case in most countries in the western part of the world, but it’s getting there. The quest for the guilty neck to put the noose around is increasing.
The aviation industry takes great pride in always improving the saftety record. Opening up and speaking about your errors and mishaps is a fundamental pillar in aviation safety. If you screw up; fess up! That way everybody can learn and we can all move along, a bit wiser than we were yesterday.
The NTSB was formed, not as a court, but as an author of a huge database of knowledge.
Now police forces are looking into organizing their own aviation incident task forces.
Tell me, will that help us all improving aviation safety, knowing that the pilot will be able to save himself by STFU? No. So, even better CVR and FDR systems are installed…
A really slippery slope, if you ask me.
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Oh yes indeed, in the 787 I can see when you farted, what you ate the night before and determine your average body temperature!
I really do think that a better image of the cockpit situation in times of an accident/incident is worth having as a learning tool, although certain countries will probably consider it an instrument for litigation first and foremost. Which is a very worrying situation in the long term.
On the other hand, CVR’s that can barely retain enough data to play 2/3 of a beatles album is not acceptable either. There’s a reason the QAR is popular with accident investigation teams these days to get parameters that are not recorded elsewhere.
QAR is fine. FOQA is fine. (Although I can’t imagine a gatekeeper calling a pilot over a bank-angle.) At my airline, all US airlines, FOQA is de-identified with only a pilot advocate provided with the keys to put the puzzle back together. This is why pilots not only allowed but even encouraged the technology. It provides the both the union and company safety committees with a massive amount of data. Our procedures and training change constantly to address negative FOQA trends. That is the proper use of safety technology–one that benefits all users and, with strong safeguards, cannot be abused by management or a governing authority .
Cockpit video is another story entirely. It’s implementation would probably lead to an attempted national strike in the US. A cockpit is not like any other workplace. Two pilots are stuck mere inches apart for hours. We need to be able to manage that relationship without the stress of big brother capturing it all for hours at a time. That is why the loop is so short. The intent is to record the actions and conversation pertinent to the accident, not the nonsense said hours earlier that had little or no bearing on why things went wrong. Also, not all countries are nice. Wherever we land, we are subject to that country’s rules, nice or not. What was recorded in the flight deck is theirs for the taking. In the wrong place and time, it could be a get into jail free card.
A few posts above, someone offered that they wouldn’t mind video in the mx hangar. Can you imagine every action you made, everything you said; on the floor, in the breakroom, in the stockroom, smoking a cigarette out back–all of it–captured (video and sound) and maybe used against you if someone decides they have cause? Now imagine all that confined into a space of only a few inescapable square feet. And if you wanted to get really morbid, imagine if things went horribly wrong and your loved ones had to watch your violent end everywhere they look until CNN gets bored with the story. It’s bad enough to hear, “Ma I love you!” (PSA Flight 182). I don’t want to see it too. This is an idea from people who haven’t a clue what life is like in the flight deck. It would have detrimental safety consequences. And fortunately it is an idea that has been agreed to be a bad one by most parties who have a say on this side of the Atlantic.
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Absolutely! And used for that purpose, it is a good thing.
Problem is that in any serious emergency situation, errors will be made, to some extent. This can and will be used against the pilot, in a court of law.
I am a little more hopeful i that regard to be honest. So far the CVR and other tools haven’t lead to a string of pilots put into jail.
Purely CVR you are correct. No one that I know of has ever walked up to an incident-free airplane and said, “Hey, for no reason I am going to pull your tapes for my listening pleasure!” But pilots have been held against their will many times. Look up the 2006 mid-air over Brazil. The Legacy crew were held for weeks (in a hotel I think).
To be honest that is a legit reason to keep the crew in custody. And being kept at an hotel isn’t that bad to a jail cell.
Another example is the Emirates 777 that crashed at Dubai, last year.
Emirates found out that there was a general problem with long landings at Dubai. They got this from their flight data analysis programme. Now, using your FDAP to identify discrepancies and trends is normally a good idea!
Telling your pilots, personally, that they have been observed performing several long landings, and that this will have consequenses unless the behaviour ceases, isn’t necessarily such a good idea. It’s all in the communication. Problem is, that it makes the pilots acutely aware that they are being monitored.
So, when the RWY awareness system called “long landing” the crew felt compelled to execute a go-around from a very low height. The wheels actually touched.
This is normally considered a high risk maneuver. They failed to engage TOGA, and the 777 stalled, and the rest is history.
Now, here’s the thing… At the initiation of the go-around, they had 3km of RWY in front of them.
So, while the flare was longer than normal, they had plenty of RWY left, and a landing would have been successful.
But, since the crew knew they were being monitored, they acted against their better knowledge.
Airlines are actively using flight data parameters to monitor flight crew performance. Everything from fuel economy, to landing performance.
This would of course be a positive safety enhancing act if they used it in a non-punitive way. But when they start publishing lists of commanders with the least fuel tankering and actively pursue those who routinely fill more fuel than the others, it will affect the morale of the flightcrews.
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What about innocent until proven guilty?
Nobody in their right mind would willingly play air-chicken and slice a wing with their winglet.
It’s obviously a mishap which just as easily could’ve been the other crews fault.
Sure, detain the crew for a few days, until a preliminary investigation can be performed, but not for weeks. This crew was detained because the media immediately decided they had to be guilty. Politics.
Turned out it was a flight controller that issued the wrong flightlevel, or something like that.
The problem is that the view is changing from a crew that are victims of a unfortunate incident, to a crew that must be at fault because there was an incident.
Take the Hudson landing as an example. Sure, they could have made Teterboro or even returned. The crew didn’t have the advantage of hindsight, so they decided on the Hudson. Had they failed, and killed everybody onboard, Sully would’ve been crucified in the media.
I’m not saying pilots should have get out of jail cards. But the trend is moving towards punishing pilots for being unlucky, or just being humans.
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I really don’t see the problem with keeping them locked up for weeks to be honest, it’s not that long in the grand scheme of things and frankly, if there is a flight risk then they should be kept locked up like one would do in any other case.
Can’t say it was the media imho, the military was in control of the ATC duties and they probably pressured the authorities in that case until it all came out how they mangled it all up.
But the crew is almost never purely the victim, they are a active part in a large percentage of the incidents. Just like the whole chain from manufacturer to maintenance to ground handling. I do agree that they should be treated as innocent until proven guilty, but merely depreciating them to a victim is not a healthy attitude either, to me it should in the basis be treated like any commuter vehicle crash, only then handled by a slightly more specialized authority.
That is a good point, but if they had crashed and died the FAA/NTSB would still have run simulator tests and found out no alternatives were there, almost nobody managed to duplicate the actual landing and a lot of external factors helped the survivability rate that day. I don’t think one should use the media as a guiding arrow on how incidents are investigated, the boards that do still have a lot of freedom and leeway to approach it as they see fit, especially because it’s often a multi-year effort and spanning a host of countries before a final report is issued. As long as they have an inherent value and allow us to advance safety then I feel like we are on the right track.
Is it perfect? Certainly not, could the media use some common sense? Damn right they should.
To be honest, one of the better reporting outlets, AV Herald has the right approach to incident/accident reporting.
I see where you are coming from but I don’t think that long term trend exists, or at least I have found no evidence for such a trend. If it does then it’s quite worrying.
Then every time an airplane goes down inexplicably, every mechanic who touched the airplane recently should be detained too… you know, just in case.
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That depends on how you look at it, doesn’t it?
There have been incidents and accidents where the crew made errors, directly contributing to the chain of events. But when you look closer at the facts you see a recurring pattern, and that several crew have made the same mistakes. Is this a case of human error, or a failure in system design?
Take the Emirates case above. The didn’t engage TOGA! How could they not? The pilots must be guilty of severe stupidity! Or…? When asked, not even Boeing testpilots were able to fully explain all the modes and submodes of the autothrottle…
Should Boeing be held accountable for overly complicated system design?
But I bet that the mainstream media would go with the fact that someone actually did save the aircraft, in the sim, by returning or going to Teteboro. You know they would. There was a planecrash in the Hudson. They would hang someone. Being a pilot means you walk a very fine line between hero and zero.
I listened to Jeff Skiles talking about the Hudson landing this spring. They weren’t even sure, themselves, if they did the right thing.
There are several cases where the police authority are jumping the gun on air accidents. They won’t wait for the NTSB report, and draw their own conclusions.
There’s actually a rather funny example here in Norway where a german Piper overran the RWY at ENSH Svolvær/Helle. The police arrived to secure the scene. Based on the only tool they had; skidmarks and braking distance for car accidents, they arrived at the conclusion that the Piper landed at 300 m/s (1000 km/h) which was way too fast and the pilot must be guilty. So they visited the pilot at the hospital, and gave him a fine… True story. 
But that’s more of a one off anecdote.
In our part of the world, things aren’t as bad. But most pilots fly abroad. Pray you don’t have an accident in the middle east or China.
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I don’t disagree with that, if a part that failed can be traced to your hands then yes, by all means have a chat. If it turns out it has been installed IAW guiding AMM revisions then so be it and move on. It’s the consequence of the responsibility we take when we let a aircraft out of the hangar each time. Not that we get paid to it, alas.
In a way, yes they should. We should at least learn from failures like that. I am not in favour of criminal persecution in all cases as I think you seem to be arguing against that point. But I do think there is an inherent responsibility you take when you move into the aviation industry.
And rightfully so, there’s very little evidence of successful water landings with modern airliners. Even the manufacturers themselves have doubts about the workability.
Right, and the normal local law enforcement authorities should have no authority in this case. The Netherlands has a dedicated aviation police unit in this regard.
It is something that should be codified or streamlined by the ICAO if that turns out to be a big problem.
Once again, I am not in favour of criminal persecution, but I do see a certain value in it just as a bus or train driver has a responsibility and criminal liability added to their jobs. So far I think it hasn’t slipped off the wrong end, but who knows what it’ll develop into.
That we do, and have been doing for decades. And making a criminal out of someone who tried their best and failed, isn’t helping.
But there is some evidence of the successrate of emergency landings in densely populated cities…
Sorry! Just had to.
Thing is, the crew made a decision based on the situation they experienced, based on their awareness and experience. Furthermore they were under severe distress as they did so. What if one passenger drowned? Should Sullenberger and Skiles be held accountable? Some people actually say they should.
Do they perform their own accident investigations, or do they rely on the Dutch NTSB to finish theirs, before deciding on criminal investigation?
You and I both know we assume responsibility for a lot of actions we don’t have the slightest chance of knowing if it has been done according to procedures or not. We have to rely on eachother, but we can’t know for sure.
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Oh how this thread is killing me! All I can say is, Thank the Gods internet forums rarely make the rules!
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