Originally posted by beet1e
Well that sucks. 
So they expect you to make a snap decision in a stressful situation with hundreds of lives hingeing on it, but they afford themselves the luxury of poring over your report and spending hours or days doing it, and then wonder why you didn't pick a better option than the one they arrived at after many man days/weeks of deliberations.
Yes, that sums it up quite nicely. It comes with the 4th stripe and those that earn that stripe and use it are always aware of the baggage like this that comes with it.
Scariest moment of my airline career was in "Charm School" the, week-long trainnig you get after earning your 4th stripe. There was a 2 hour briefing by the head company lawyer on all the things we were responsible for, could be held accountable for and nasty examples of previous Captain that ran afoul of the various supervising authorities. All of us went home that night wondering if we'd made a bargain with the devil.
Still, it was worth it and I wouldn't trade it for anything. In practice, it's not quite that grim. There have only been a few times that I was excessively scrutinized for my decisions and each time I ended up being complimented for a job well done.
