Speculation vs. Safety: Why Facts Must Fly First in Aviation

I had originally planned to write a brief article about safety within the aviation industry, an industry that prides itself on being a safety-first and ‘just’ culture, but more on that another time. I believe that there are more pressing issues to discuss given the recent accident to Air India AI171.

No sooner had the news started circulating the networks than a plethora of aviation experts appeared from the woodwork to give their views on what caused the accident.

The qualifications of these people seemed to range from flight deck crew to those who may have perhaps once been on aeroplane at some point in their life. It seems that everyone had something to say on the matter: news networks were falling over themselves to find answers, and I am sure if Laika had been around, one of the networks would have trotted her out in front of the cameras. The world wants to know.

Yes, indeed it does, but aviation only wants to know the correct answer. We must learn from catastrophic events such as this and from every other event that could lead to an erosion of safety margins. That is why we have a reporting system and that is why certain categories of aircraft are compelled to carry flight recorders.

So, when Captain Joe Patroni of Airport fame delivers his opinion on what happened, we are getting just that, an opinion, nothing more, and we must question whether this is aimed at genuinely furthering our knowledge or merely an exercise in getting 15 minutes of fame.

The majority of these ‘experts’ pointed to pilot error: full runway not used, wrong flap selection, flaps retracted instead of gear, the list goes on. A situation made worse by the fact these opinions were delivered with such certainty based on a couple of grainy videos. Were it up to these people there would be no need for any further investigation. The unconfirmed reports of a mayday call, possibly indicating a power loss hardly got a mention; job done, pilots guilty. Not exactly what the families of the pilots need to hear having lost their loved ones, especially from professionals who should know better.

On the other hand, perhaps we should also condemn the media for moving away from reporting news to delivering opinions wrapped up as news. I know this has been around for a long time, op-eds are nothing new, but opinions are not news unless we have redefined the meaning of the word. In cases such as this, reporting only the facts as they are known should be the only thing we should hear.

Fortunately, accident investigators are true professionals and are not prone to speculation, preferring to gather evidence before announcing a verdict, and assuming the flight recorders are undamaged, along with anything else the investigators discover, we should have the answer as to why this tragedy occurred.

Which leaves one more thing. Should the investigation conclude the pilots played no part in this catastrophe, other than the apparently impossible task of trying to get the aircraft down safely, are those ‘experts’ who roundly condemned the flight deck crew going to return to the media channels and apologise? No, I didn’t think so.

by Glen Stansfield