Aviation accidents
I feel like I’d be a smug idiot if I were to sit here and tell myself that aviation is an incredibly safe form of transportation, and in fact becomes safer by the day, when 9 people just lost their lives in West Palm Beach. At the same time, I cannot accept the idea that civil aviation is inherently dangerous when this flight was just one of thousands that took place across the world yesterday, the vast majority of which were totally unremarkable, and none of which ended in tragedy. I want to tell myself that these aircraft are designed to be statically stable, that they contain multiple layers of redundancies to guarantee a safe journey, and that the Swiss cheese model can be solved, and largely has been solved already. But, for all the miracles and innovations that the human race has produced in the modern age, we cannot mitigate the effects of mere seconds of exposure to icing conditions at altitude, we cannot predict future weather states with any real amount of accuracy, and we unfortunately cannot eliminate pilot error as a contributing factor in other recent events.
There is nothing good that comes out of an accident like this. A family has been destroyed, and the combined experience and aspirations of two pilots have been permanently extinguished. The least bad outcome from yesterday’s mishap is that things will change. The NTSB will make sure of that. Actions will be devised and recommendations will be implemented to ensure that what happened yesterday cannot occur again. We will learn from this. But, with the utmost sincerity, I have to ask: when will we stop learning? When will it ever be enough?
I have one more thought to end this post on. Extraordinary heroism is not a prerequisite to be a practitioner of aviation. And yet, when the chips were down, that is exactly what this aircrew exhibited. Unable to aviate, nor to navigate, they elected to communicate. They piloted their aircraft to the very end. I wish more people would focus on that.
Fair winds and following seas.