The Blame Game

Airline pilots have made the headlines this past week and for all the wrong reasons. As a near life-long aviator and a commercial airline pilot for 26 years (and still growing), I would be remiss to offer judgement on colleagues. I can, however, offer an opinion on the underlying causes for such lapses and how the airline pilot community is far from unique in this regard.

To refresh your memory, last Monday morning a Delta jet landed on a parallel taxiway rather than the runway at Atlanta’s Hartsfield Airport. The flight was an all-nighter (or red-eye, if you prefer) from Rio. Then, on Wednesday a Northwest jet overshot its destination of Minneapolis by a state before responding to Air Traffic controllers over Wisconsin and turning around. Far be it for me to render any kind of meaningful explanation for these lapses other than stating the obvious: these pilots were not paying proper attention to the task at hand.

Delta and Northwest Airlines, as separate entities, have both visited bankruptcy court and, as a result, the earning potential of all employees has been reduced. Retirement benefits, likewise, have suffered. Now these two airlines are merging and the seniority fallout among the pilot group could well have further negative consequences. Is it any wonder that these four pilots may have had other things on their minds? Many of my contemporaries have taken on other jobs to supplement what once was a comfortable life-style. No more three days “off” between trips: now, those days are filled with other activities to fill a financial void.

The airline piloting profession is not the only career field to experience such challenges. As a matter of fact, I’d say just about every worker-bee out there is filled with some degree of angst when thinking about income and job security. From doctors to lawyers to teachers to any other endeavor, we are being asked to do more with less and for less. I cannot imagine anyone doing high-quality work when faced with distractions and doubts about the future.

The tragedy lies in the fact that our four pilots may never again have access to their cockpit. This may come to pass in an attempt to paint them as aberrations so as to assuage the traveling public’s worry over an unsafe air travel industry. “The system’s fine, folks. It’s just these few bad apples that we need to weed out and then everything’ll be AOK.” This is tantamount to removing a few cancerous cells while ignoring the tumor responsible for their existence in the first place. In fact, they are nothing more than scapegoats to avoid a hard look at the underlying causes for such behavior.

Over-worked, under-paid, over-stressed workers from all sectors of the business world are “weeded out” under the same pretense while the underlying causes are ignored. This is equally bad for the provider of such service as well as the customer. Most of us want to do a good job and all of us want those that we hire to do a good job. But many outside forces are currently conspiring against such high quality results. Perhaps it is to be expected in these uncertain times, but to single out those that fall prey to such distractions as though there were no other mitigating circumstances is irresponsible and does nothing to prevent similar scenarios.

As some sort of stop-gap measure, many workplace environments have installed “fool-proof” safeguards to prevent such events. While this may provide a greater margin against error, there is nothing that is “damned-fool-proof” and it is damned foolish when those entrusted with varying degrees of responsibility allow themselves to be distracted. Not unusual or unheard of or even unthinkable. Just damned foolish. Only constant vigilance and the recognition of the root causes for such deviations can help prevent future blunders.