Airlines in the US do not pressure pilots to avoid go arounds. Pilots in the US do not delegate life or death decisions to ops, especially since the FAA legally holds them accountable for that. All pilots are aware that they are responsible for the decision to go around or not.
Any airline found to be pressuring pilots to avoid go arounds would be in a world of pain with the FAA.
On cargo flights in particular timing and fuel usage are less critical than passenger flights, and a go around doesn't affect either much.
Pressure to avoid go arounds would also be incredibly counter productive since go arounds exist to preserve life and property. Pilots do go arounds to avoid costly incidents.
You are correct that the question is why they didn't do a go around, but I would bet a large sum of money that airline pressure to avoid go arounds was not a factor.
> The Amazon Prime Air Boeing 767 cargo plane that crashed off a Miami runway on Sunday, killing five people, was operated by a North Carolina company that has been accused by past employees of violating safety regulations, legal documents reveal.
There's a lot in the article, but this allegation is worth highlighting:
> Seuring's attorney, Michael Anello, told the judge that another 21 Air pilot, Johnny Salmonson, "was being pressured to fly in periods of time that were too short to comply with the proper amounts of rest, and that implicated safety. The layovers were too short."
If any of those are true, it will be very bad for the carrier, but they are not related to any of the failures being reported on.
If pilots weren't being given enough rest time, as alleged, you don't believe that might affect decision-making in the cockpit?
There have been accidents around the world where pilots were trying to save fuel, get off work at a normal time instead of 2 hours extra holding, not wanting to divert and not be home, try to get on the ground so they don’t go over their max hours for the day, etc.
Yes it’s counterproductive. *It happens*. External or internal, it happens.
Sure there have been plenty of incidents. Can you point to one in the US, with pilots flying big planes, that hasn't led to regulatory change?
Its worth pointing out that pilots are almost always paid by flight hour. In other words, they get paid more to go around.
That one did lead to major regulatory changes. It wasn't in the US though but there was an American plane involved (which was not to blame)
Note: Both planes were American. One of the carriers was not. NTSB gets involved whenever it is a US carrier OR manufacturer, so they have a ton more data than just US carrier incidents.
Has timeliness based performance reviews ever been reported at any US carrier in the past half century?
Take a look at Southwest's safety record. I believe they have 1 fatality due to an air incident in their history due to an uncontained engine failure that was not related to maintenance.
Also this was Amazon, not Southwest.
Construction companies in the US do not pressure employees to get shit done. Construction workers do not delegate the decisions to work in sketchy circumstances, especially since OSHA holds them accountable for all that.
See how silly that sounds?
They cook up the rules to be all compliant and whatnot and then everyone breaks them a little pretty often and in tasteful ways in order to actually get the job done. If you get caught or screw up, it's on you.
I assume this sort of pressure happens a lot less with pilots because of the cost of screw ups but there's still probably some implied pressure there.
Airlines are much more tightly bound by the FAA than any construction company is to any regulatory agency. Airlines have to get permission to let their pilots read documents off an iPad instead of paper, for example. It just isn't a good comparison to compare the most safety aware industry on earth to one famous for ignoring safety rules.
I've worked construction. I have a pilots license in multiple countries (including the US). They aren't the same.
I didn't say the same. I said the pressure was probably there too. But you can construe it as the former because that's a way easier thing to argue with.
I assume that since the NTSB database makes every single incident investigation public you can point to at least one instance where an ATP was pressured into avoiding a go around?
Commit to an action that ultimately caused a crash because they wanted to achieve ancillary goals (e.g. not be late)? Tons.
They call this "get-there-itis" (makes me feel so dirty trotting out buzzwords like that).
Can you point me to one of the specific incidents you are citing since both the new search and the old search seem to be broken for that specific term?
Edit: just to be clear: I’m not saying that companies don’t pressure transportation workers into bad decisions. My original supposition is that I have never heard of, nor would it make any sense, for a US airline to have a policy of avoiding go arounds. “Land rhe plane on the first try, or else…” is an exceptionally stupid policy.
In German railways there is a saying "Fracht motzt nicht, Fracht kotzt nicht" - freight neither complains nor vomits.
I would not be surprised at all to find this kind of attitude in air freight transportation too.
The cockpit voice recorder transcript has the copilot repeatedly saying "we're coming in too fast" but the pilot never clearly acknolwedges.
The copilot ought to have been more assertive and said "We need to go around. NOW."
The pilot shouldn't have needed that. He should have made the call himself, but even if he was unsure, once his copilot called that he should have done the right thing.
Neither of them will ever fly again. The only question now is if either of them will go to prison. There's already a civil wrongful death lawsuit against them.
Why do you say this so confidently? Aviation generally does not have a culture of taking future employment away from people proximate to accidents.
Seems likely the FO will be fine. The CA will have some hard questions to answer.
The thing that amazes me about this is the timeline here:
00:30 The nose and right main gear touched down at a groundspeed of 158 knots.
...
00:19 The left main gear touched down at a groundspeed of 134 knots.
00:15 A pilot called for a go-around.
11 seconds and 24 knots after the nose touched down and then the left main finally also touched down? Wow. Then 4 seconds after all that the go-around. It is one thing to hold the nose off for that long, but a main mount?!
It'll be interesting to see the outcome of the NTSB investigation, they're usually quite thorough.
One of CHR's service providers was conducting hiring shenanigans and not fully, legally screening their drivers. One of the service provider's drivers hit another vehicle and crippled that vehicle's driver, who sued. CHR argued all liability should fall on the trucking company who hired the driver. The Supreme Court said no, CHR could be held liable for negligence in vetting their service provider as well, because it was ultimately CHR's load being carried.
I'm not a lawyer, but under that legal precedent, it seems Amazon might not be off the hook for damages in this case, given it was their subcontractor who was carrying Amazon cargo in a jet with "Prime Air" on the side.