Air France VPs -- Scientists Smackdown
"Air France tells pilots to shape up, stop blaming equipment." Seattle Post-Intelligencer
In a strongly-worded six-page memo titled, "Enough polemics and false debates on flight safety!" Air France Air Operations Director Pierre-Marie Gutron and Security Chief Etienne Lichtenberger warned pilots to be more vigilant about safety procedures and upbraided those blaming flight equipment for the crash of Flight 447 into the Atlantic.
The Directors write, "Temptation is great to call into question . . . our doctrine. Enough scandals and false debates about flight security!" reads the memo, sent pilots Tuesday. The officers chide "self-appointed experts in the media" with "judgments insufficient or totally wrong, thereby laying disorder in the minds of some Air France pilots by making them doubt our doctrine, our procedures and those of Airbus."
"We ask you not to succumb to the more extreme voices that speak to excess. There are no procedures to correct, no new ones to create. It suffices simply to apply our doctrine, our procedures, in calmness and serenity," the memo says. -- Composite from AP's Angela Charlton, La Tribune, Charles Bremner at The London Times and Bloomberg.com's Simon Kennedy. Thank you all.
The international scientific community has strongly disagreed for years:
"Recent accident reports involving software stop at blaming the pilots and never get to the root cause why the crash occurred -- why pilots made mistakes, how to prevent them again, why the software was wrong, and why it wasn't detected before pilots used the system." -- Dr. Nancy G. Leveson, MIT Aeronautics and Astronautics, 2004
"Humans want simple answers to complex problems and ascribe blame to a single cause. But there are other factors in these oversimplifications -- liability and misplaced faith in technology. Seldom are accidents the result of only one thing going wrong. The few times I found this true, it is a computer that is the primary agent." -- Dr. Peter G. Neumann, SRI International
"Pilot error is not a cause, but is a symptom of trouble deeper inside the system . . . it is critical to understand why people did what they did, rather than judging them for not doing what we know they should have done. What pilots do makes sense to them at the time -- otherwise they would not do it. People do not come to work to do a bad job."
"Pilots do things that are reasonable based on their limited knowledge, goals, and understanding of the situation and their limited resources at the time . . . failures are baked into the nature of people's work and organization; they are symptoms of deeper trouble or byproducts of systemic brittleness in the way business is done."
"The question is not 'where did people go wrong?' but 'why did this assessment or action make sense to them?' Such real insight is derived not from judging people from the position of retrospective outsider, but from seeing the world through the eyes of the protagonists. When looking at events from this perspective, a very different story often struggles into view." -- Dr. Sidney W. A. Dekker, Lund University School of Aviation, Ljungbyhed, Sweden
"Don't watch what you did wrong, you do the same crap all over." -- Jimmy McNulty
So who's right? The corporation or the scientists? Follow the money; you be the judge.
Your totally-wrong, self-appointed media expert speaking to excess and laying disorder who has only analyzed these computercides since 1995.
John T. Halliday, Author, Murder By Computer: The Hidden Perils Of Air Travel