Bad stuff happens.
Most of the time the bad stuff is preventable.
There are two types of people, those who realize that the bad stuff could have been prevented if they had engaged in better head work and those who think other people should prevent them from getting hurt from their own bad head work.
As a young pilot I engaged in lots of examples of bad head work. Some of it makes me laugh. Some of it wakes me up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat.
Its amazing how your brain digs up ancient mistakes and reminds you how close you came to pushing daisies.
The NTSB wants to mandate technological fixes for what is really a failure of human beings to accept responsibility for their own actions.
There is weather that will kill you if you let it. I suspect that, in the end, this will be the case. It is quite likely that this flight will turn out to be a series of decisions that led to disaster. The public focus will be on the last decision. The one closest to the tragedy.
The accident is truly prevented long before that. It starts with inculcating pilots with a certain attitude.
Pilots have begun to believe the marketing slogan. Flying is safe
That is pure marketing. Flying is incredibly dangerous. Just think about it. In the hands of amateurs aircraft would crash willy-nilly.
But the public needs the marketing slogans or they would never fly.
Pilots on the other hand need to be aware that every minute of every flight that flying is extremely hazardous. Only their good decisions make the difference.
It seems to me that Roselawn and most probably this accident were the result of pilots believing the marketing. I know for SURE the crew in Roselawn was less than concentrated on safety of flight. Don't ask me how, I'm not going to tell you. You will just have to trust that as fact.
Maybe I'm doing a disservice to my recently dead brethren but I'd be where they are now except for my own good luck. I've done my share of very stupid things in airplanes. I just happen to be lucky.
If the end result is new regulations for fancier ice protection and new procedures for when and where to configure flaps, gear, trim etc etc etc then we will know another band-aid is being put on the problem.
Not that I'm against better equipment and safer procedures but until the airlines focus on pilot's putting the responsibility for safety on themselves it really isn't going to change things.
