Criminal prosecution of Garuda pilot

[Adrian B]

A couple of days ago, my work mate watched a 24 year old run a red light. As a consequence of his actions, which he chose to undertake (namely drive through the red light,) my work mate watched two people die. That driver is now in remand on culpable driving charges.

When you take on the responsibility of a pilot, driver or any other role involving people, you must accept the responsibility that comes wih the job, a resonsibility to operate a vehicle in a safe and legal manner.

I do not know the facts about the crash other than what I saw. That said, If the PIC chose to ignore warnings, and ignore training he had been given to allow him to legally and competently fly the aircraft in question, then he must be held responsibile for his actions.

As for the comment about removing the fuse to disable the CVR, I think that it is a stain on the majority of professional pilots who do the right thing and follow procedures and training. If you have nothing to hide, then whats the issue?

PS I was a pilot,

[Philip Argy]

Originally Posted by Montague S

http://www.dephub.go.id/knkt/ntsc_av...%20Release.pdf

Thanks Montague S

Note the third main paragraph on page 2 of the Report, as well as the third paragraph in the boxed section on that page:

Readers are advised that the NTSC investigates for the sole purpose of
enhancing aviation safety. Consequently, NTSC reports are confined
to matters of safety significance and may be misleading if used for any

other purpose.

and

Readers should note that the information in NTSC reports and
recommendations is provided to promote aviation safety. In no

case is it intended to imply blame or liability.

That would be sufficent for any jury or panel of judges to have reasonable doubts if the report as such was tendered in evidence as proof of any criminal conduct. That's why the underlying evidence itself has to be presented to the triers of fact and the theory of what happened and how it proves the criminality of the pilot all developed from first principles. Whilst the Schapelle Corby case doesn't give me the greatest faith in the Indonesian criminal justice system, it's better than you get in many other countries and it's at least open for all to see.

Rhys,
Accident Reports are compiled to learn from, and find out what went wrong. NOT to attribute blame.

If you're saying that this pilot should be gaoled for his decisions that day, then you're attributing blame.

Are you also saying that every other pilot in past accidents who have made a wrong decision, should also go to gaol? If you're not, then why say it about this pilot?

I'm not saying he made a right decision or a wrong decision. However, the accident report lays out the facts of the accident for enhancing safety across the aviation industry worldwide.

Please have a think about the above, and maybe read things in the reports before blaming people.

Chris

[D Chan]

indeed the question of criminal prosecution of the Garuda captain will raise a few eyebrows especially for those who have an active involvement in aviation safety or the legal fraternity.

What Montague had said previously about Asians and pointing fingers are true to a certain extent, although I believe the notion of saving 'face' is more significant.

To what extent are the pilots responsible for this accident? Certainly by all means the aircraft as reported by the media was airworthy and visibility definitely was not in question.

Airlines, Aircraft Manufacturers, Aircraft part manufacturers have all been sued in many previous accidents. I think it is worthwhile comparing the Garuda crash with the infamous Aeroflot A310 crash over Siberia (where kids were allowed to be seated in the Captain's seat). Does the Tech Crew have the duty of care for ensuring the safety of passengers and occupants on the flight? - the answer is obviously yes - though it's a question of how much or to what extent. What if the Crew unintentionally jeopardised the safety of the flight through his / her actions - yes, they still do have the duty of care, but I would not think they would have breached it. It would be a different story however if the pilot-flying's action was deemed to be so wreckless, to the extent that it could be determined as a deliberate safety breach.

It is worth referring to the James Reason's model of safety culture:

Informed Culture– when all stakeholders have the necessary knowledge about the personal, technical and environmental components of a systematic approach to managing safety

Reporting Culture– people are encouraged and supported in reporting hazards, near misses, incidents and errors
Learning Culture – lessons learned are regularly communicated across the business so continual improvement is achieved
Risk Aware and Planning Culture – people focus on the identification of hazards prior to exposing stakeholders. Being proactive in hazard identification, control and removal, and accident and injury protection as well as health preservation and promotion is important
Just and Caring Culture – no blame is applied to those who proactively report and there is an environment of trust

We already know that safety investigations have shifted from the previous practice of apportioning blame solely on the Flight Crew for committing errors / mistakes (often they are defenseless because they don't have the chance to respond if they also died in the crash) to a more 'systemic' approach of investigating latent failures and safety deficiencies within the ‘blunt’ end of organisations (e.g. management levels).

I am sure that besides the Garuda crew on this flight, the investigation would have uncovered at least *some* deficiencies within this 'blunt end' of the airline e.g. training issues, organisation culture etc.
I do fear that the prosecution of the Flight Crew would pave the way back to the bad days of apportioning the blame solely on the crew. If that is the case I believe this would be counter-productive and that future safety investigations would not be as effective in enhancing safety across our industry.

Do note though - under Reason's Safety Culture model for 'just' culture - the element of 'no blame' does not cover those who choose to deliberately sabotage or jeopardise the safety of the flight.

[Rhys Xanthis]

Originally Posted by ChrisG.

Are you also saying that every other pilot in past accidents who have made a wrong decision, should also go to gaol? If you're not, then why say it about this pilot?

I'm not saying he made a right decision or a wrong decision. However, the accident report lays out the facts of the accident for enhancing safety across the aviation industry worldwide.

Please have a think about the above, and maybe read things in the reports before blaming people.

Look, all i was saying is that from what i have seen he should be jailed. People can accept or not accept my view, thats fine, i dont mind.

But my opinions are my opinions and they will not be easily changed by people telling me otherwise.

I chose to say that this pilot should go to jail because from what I have read of the awareness of the issue in the cockpit, the pilot did not listen at all to warnings, did not respond to various visual and audio alarms and he also mostly ignored the advice of the First Officer on the flight to go around.

When i have some time tomorrow i will read through those reports, however right now, from what i have seen, that is my opinion.

[Ray P.]

So I suspect it's safe to say that this is your uninformed (or perhaps not completly informed) opinion which you find difficult to change easily. The risk is that your opinion may be wrong, resulting in you casting aspertions on an individual who may be entirely innocent.

[Rhys Xanthis]

Originally Posted by Ray P.

So I suspect it's safe to say that this is your uninformed (or perhaps not completly informed) opinion which you find difficult to change easily. The risk is that your opinion may be wrong, resulting in you casting aspertions on an individual who may be entirely innocent.

I would say not completely informed, but from what i have seen, he seems to be the only party that really caused it.

But i will read the reports when i get round to it...im lazy

[damien b]

I believe this is a Catch 22 situation. The Pilot in question more than likely failed to ahead to cockpit warnings and advice from a fellow pilot and landed the aircraft under his command in an unsafe manner. As already mentioned safety investigations are not designed to attribute blame, but find out what went wrong.

However, as also mentioned, there have been previous cases of pilots, tech crew and ground crew charged and found guilty following the safety investigations.

Pilots want to feel safe and have confidence in a safety system that is not designed to find them guilty if they cause an accident. The public however want to know that a pilot can be charged if he/she makes a mistake that causes death or injury due to neglect/failure of a duty of care.

The FDR/CVR was designed to allow safety investigation to occur. It has been used in criminal cases succesfully and contray to what some say here, if a member of either the aircrew or ground crew can be charged with criminal negligence following an incident causing death then do so. If that makes others scared, well they shouldn't be if they obey the rules, follow laid out instructions and provide a duty of care. If a court of law finds them not guilty, great - if guilty, well lock them up and give them a suitable punishment.

[Mick M]

Any evidence can be tendered, in court and there is very little information these days that cannot be subpoenaed in legal proceedings, particularly when there is a strong probitive value attached to that information. And prior to that there is also much information, records and data that can be obtained by investigators by way of warrant.

However the discussion here should revolve around the key element of acting in accordance with company training, procedures, aviation law and the manufacturers guidelines. Where you act in accordance with these you place yourself well within a window of protection from prosecution and to a lesser degree, civil liability.

However when you substantially deviate from one or any of these procedures you leave yourself exposed with no reasonable protection because you have done something that is clearly well outside a number of published procedures, all of which exist to safeguard the aircraft and aviation generally. If you choose to embark on a course of action outside these, then you accept a significant personal liability when things go wrong. And when this happens you should expect no leniency merely because you are flying an aircraft.

And as to crew pulling C/B's, well I'd expect they would have a very short and limited future in the industry with any reputable operator should they be caught out doing that.

Operators of other vessels and vehicles who are appropriately licenced to a standard and have to comply with accepted rules and laws are held criminally responsible if their actions are so reckless there is injury or damage caused. In that respect why should aircrew, who have significantly greater training, knowledge and expertise of their equipment be held to a lower standard of accountability than the rest of the community?

CASA obviously prosecutes pilots for detected offences and should continue to do so in the interests of encouraging compliance. The ATSB obviously have aviation safety and safety improvement as their goal and that should not change, but nor is it reasonable to expect that expert crash investigators will not be called to give evidence in criminal proceedings either.

[Edward Terry]

Originally Posted by Mick M

And as to crew pulling C/B's, well I'd expect they would have a very short and limited future in the industry with any reputable operator should they be caught out doing that.

Out of interest how would an operator know whether the C/B had been pulled?