I think the final report allocated a significant and appropriate amount of responsibility for this accident on lack of training.
The recommendations for Airbus seemed to be more along the lines of "In an ideal situation, had this contingency been in place, the accident may have been prevented."
The analogy I look to is this. If someone backs up in their driveway and inadvertently hits a young child behind the car, that is the driver's responsibility. As a driver, you should always know what's behind you before you back up. But as a recommendation, to avoid similar future occurrences, one might recommend a rear view camera, without actually making such an improvement mandatory for all vehicles.
At the end of the day, a rear view camera should not be necessary for a driver who does what he or she is supposed to. In the case of this accident, had these pilots done what they were supposed to - in fact, had they just not done what they were not supposed to - then the additional recommendations pertaining to Airbus would never have come into play. Indeed, had the pilots done absolutely nothing but sit there and gape, they might well have come out of the situation unscathed.
The factor that does not get addressed in the report is that of pitot tubes, and the fact that they are the one critical system that lacks redundancy. Probably there is no way to include this in the report, but for aviation in general, I think we have now had enough crashes related to pitot tube malfunctions to insist on a redundant backup system.
The recommendations for Airbus seemed to be more along the lines of "In an ideal situation, had this contingency been in place, the accident may have been prevented."
The analogy I look to is this. If someone backs up in their driveway and inadvertently hits a young child behind the car, that is the driver's responsibility. As a driver, you should always know what's behind you before you back up. But as a recommendation, to avoid similar future occurrences, one might recommend a rear view camera, without actually making such an improvement mandatory for all vehicles.
At the end of the day, a rear view camera should not be necessary for a driver who does what he or she is supposed to. In the case of this accident, had these pilots done what they were supposed to - in fact, had they just not done what they were not supposed to - then the additional recommendations pertaining to Airbus would never have come into play. Indeed, had the pilots done absolutely nothing but sit there and gape, they might well have come out of the situation unscathed.
The factor that does not get addressed in the report is that of pitot tubes, and the fact that they are the one critical system that lacks redundancy. Probably there is no way to include this in the report, but for aviation in general, I think we have now had enough crashes related to pitot tube malfunctions to insist on a redundant backup system.
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