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Canadian Agency Investigates US Air Crash
knorthern knight writes "When 2 light civilian planes collide in U.S. airspace in Virginia, the usual response includes calling in the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) and NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) to investigate and make recommendations based on their results. But what do you do when the crash involves two planes piloted by a crash investigator with the FAA and the chief medical officer with the NTSB? In order to avoid conflict of interest by American investigators working for these agencies, the investigation has been turned over to to the Transportation Safety Board of Canada as a neutral 3rd party."
A rare moment of common sense for an American agency. I didn't think it possible.
Most likely, they can investigate it impartially and come with a neutral conclusions. However, they don't want to take the slightest risk that someone tries to protect, whether conciously or not, their boss, co-worker or underling. Even worse, someone may have a score to settle with one of the people involved. Finally, even if the organization would know everything and manage to carefully pick someone who has nothing to do in any way with the people involved, an outside observer could still claim that the investiagation may not have been impartial. What they did if the right thing and what every organization in a similar situation should have done.
You don't understand pride in your company, do you? They aren't saying that they won't be able to investigate fairly, but they want to avoid the situation where a FAA or NTSB investigator might want to hide some evidence showing that their friend was a drunk who crashed the plane. Again, not saying that they won't be able to investigate fairly, but they just don't want their guys to be in that position.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
What would happen if a medical doctor ever became hurt by another doctor? Send them to Canada?
No. You'd find a third doctor that wasn't connected to either of the two doctors. If you were looking for a medical opinion for a malpractice case for instance, you wouldn't use a doctor that is part of the same practice as the accused doctor. There may not be any actual bias, but even the appearance of such can have negative consequences.
Seriously? You can't investigate objectively because the people involved were in your organisation?
What would happen if a medical doctor ever became hurt by another doctor? Send them to Canada?
NTSB has 400 employees that includes beaurocrats and administrative staff, those that actually investigate crashes is likely far far smaller (likely even smaller for FAA). You would likely have better luck sitting an inpartial jury in a town of 400. People tend to try to defend people they know and work with, it's human nature and often completely subconcious.
"I don't necessarily agree with everything I say." - Marshall McLuhan
You assume the FAA and NTSB can investigate the incident objectively? No?
Sheesh, can the US become more of a third world country?
I guess they can refuse to investigate unless they get paid by an "interested party", but that's about it.
Seriously? You can't investigate objectively because the people involved were in your organisation?
What would happen if a medical doctor ever became hurt by another doctor? Send them to Canada?
Exactly how big do you think those organisations (FAA, NTSB) are?? The NTSB at least is tiny - everyone would know everyone else. It's not just about them doing their work objectively, it's about being seen to do their work objectively. If a doctor is ever negligent you certainly wouldn't let his mates conduct the investigation.
It's not that they can't be objective, it's that we shouldn't be putting them in a situation to have to choose. Like it or not, we're still human, and the emotional tendency to loyalty shouldn't have to be tested.
It's much the same as judicial refusal. It's entirely likely that the judge could be impartial, but for any cse where they might have an interest, they step aside. That's not an indication of thirld world status...that's acknowledging that we're human, and dealing with it.
It's not even that. If the NTSB or the FAA investigate this accident, and do so entirely dispassionately and fairly, there will still be *someone* - probably on slashdot, at that - who will go "ZOMG WTF CONSPIRACY THEY ARE COVERING UP THE TRUTH! THE PLANE WAS WIRED WITH EXPLOSIVES! THE JEWS/MUSLIMS/PETA/MORMON TABERNACLE CHOIR DID IT!".
> You assume the FAA and NTSB can investigate the incident objectively?
It's not really a question of whether they can or can't, but whether they can appear to do it objectively. That's a lot tougher; the average person just plain assumes that organizations don't investigate their own people in an unbiased fashion.
Log in or piss off.
Why risk the temptation? The FAA and NTSB investigate a lot of crashes that end up being caused by pilot error. Lots of people in the world are reluctant to place the blame on a well-trained pilot acting in good faith by saying that his actions were the cause of what might be hundreds of deaths.
Compare this to the French investigation of the Air France crash from Brazil a couple of years ago where efforts were made both to protect the pilots' good names and to shift blame away from Airbus. In this case, the FAA and NTSB are investigating events involving people who might have been friends, bosses, or co-workers. There is an undeniable risk of losing impartiality here, no matter how incorruptibly good people might have been investigating it. Why take the risk, even if it's small? Why even place that burden on them to begin with?
The whole essence of these investigations is to impartially find the factual causes of these accidents. To investigate them with any kind of doubt placed on the shoulders of the investigators would do everyone, from the people killed, the agencies, and the citizens who employ them, a great disservice.
You do realize there are all of about 600 of us working in the US who have been trained in any aspect of accident investigation, and like all but 30, I'm in the military.
You can't investigate objectively because the people involved were in your organisation?
By definition, no.
In principle, no.
In practice, no.
It doesn't even matter if in your mind you were "objective". A characteristic of information is not merely how true it actually is, but how reliable it is known to be.
Agents preparing information have to be able to demonstrate objectivity, independence and integrity to their principal else they cannot produce reliable information.
Compare this to the French investigation of the Air France crash from Brazil a couple of years ago where efforts were made both to protect the pilots' good names and to shift blame away from Airbus.
I have to really take issue with this - right up until the black boxes were recovered, everything the BEA released implicated Airbus, to the point that Airbus had to issue several Airworthiness Directives regarding pitot tube icing and other things.
It was only when the flight data recorders were recovered that the BEAs stance shifted, and the pilots actions were called into question. Its highly likely that the BEA will implicate both the pilots and Airbus in its final report later this year.
So I think your assertion that the BEAs objectivity being in question is absurd.
What he means to say is that the procedures used to do those things will follow Canadian law. So instead of following the American rules for evidence gathering, Canadian laws will apply. This is presumably to make sure that the investigators aren't constantly second guessing if something is admissible or not because they're using an unfamiliar set of rules.
Cynical Idealist
THE JEWS/MUSLIMS/PETA/MORMON TABERNACLE CHOIR DID IT!".
I'd have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, blowing things up is generally to be frowned upon. On the other, the fact that these groups could come together to behind a common cause would serve a both an inspiration and a reason to hope for the future of humanity.
how many pairs of boxer shorts should you own?
Well, I think that individuals who are honest and care about their work can contain their personal biases by conscientiously following lines of inquiry that lead in directions they'd rather not take. If that were not possible, it would be impossible to be honest with yourself about your own behavior. But like being honest with yourself, it's a lot easier to convince yourself you're being impartial than to actually do it.
I see a number of good reasons for bringing in outsiders, but the most compelling one is credibility. If an inside investigator clears a colleague or wrongdoing, people will suspect a cover-up. If he concludes that a colleague bears individual responsibility, *that* can be seen as a cover-up too: they might be throwing someone under the bus to protect the organization.
That last scenario actually happened in the US Navy investigation of the 1989 investigation of an explosion that killed 47 men in the gun turret of the USS Iowa. The bodies were removed without documenting their location or condition, the equipment in the turret removed and thrown overboard, and the interior repainted. All this was done with the knowledge of the admiral running the investigation. Witness testimony was coerced and in some cases altered, and the technical lead in the investigation was the officer who had overseen the packing of the powder bags that exploded. The only reason we know all this was the attempt at scapegoating was so transparent.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Now, I would like to see a disinterested, neutral 3rd-party investigate the rest of our three-letter-agencies.
I'd also like to see that same level of oversight on three branches of our Government.
-- Posted from my parent's basement
They are, in effect, the safety police.
Just like any other police force, they should never be allowed to investigate their own. Even having a separate "independent" police force investigate does not eliminate "thin blue line" bias.
Picking one from another country is as good as it gets from an objectivity perspective.
I don't think law has anything to do with it. It is an investigation. What happened in what sequence leading up to the crash. It will be lawyers and victims afterwards that decide who gets sued, charged, fined etc (if their dead good luck) if anyone.
I'm amazed at the number of people debating the objectivity question. What about the effectiveness question? What about the emotional pain question? One of your closest coworkers that you have known for years, worked with for years, has just died. And now somebody wants you to investigate the accident. Oooof. The grieving process has been studied extensively, and I don't think you want someone who is grieving to be conducting the investigation, purely from effectiveness reasons. And I'm pretty sure they would want to do something else, too. Like maybe see if his friend's kids are OK or need anything. These men's best friends have more imporant things to do right now than document an accident scene.
The problem with a lot of these accident reports (or rather, people's reading of them) is that they list multiple causes. Most accident investigation agencies recognize that there is almost always never one cause of an accident. It's a confluence of multiple factors which causes an accident, the lack of any one which may have prevented it. Had the pitot tubes on AF447 not iced over, the pilots would not have gotten contradictory flight information. Had Airbus written the software better, the pilots would have realized exactly what parts of the plane they were/weren't controlling. And had the pilots (or rather one pilot) communicated better and realized they were giving the flight computer contradictory inputs, disaster could have been averted.
Unfortunately, there's a tendency for people to try to narrow things down too much, to one single cause. AF447 crashed because of the pilots. Or it crashed because of Airbus. The Gulf War was about oil, or it was about fighting terrorism. Things are almost never that simple, and most accident reports I've read have avoided this tendency and nearly always report multiple causes.
...and there are enough worthy candidates here to burn through 15 easily, so I''ll just say
...the crash involves two planes piloted by a crash investigator with the FAA and the chief medical officer with the NTSB...
is something even Clancy wouldn't think he could get away with as a plot device, even if he had dreamed it up.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
The tradition of judicial recusal (not refusal) is based on exactly what is seen here. By simply removing any implied connection between the authorities and the participants, the court is seen to function as it should, at arms-length from those involved.
This is a wise decision, and I am sure the favour would be returned if there were a similar situation in Canada.
The decision to invite the Canadian participation has nothing at all to do with the quality of U.S. investigators and those complaining about it should realize that it can only help get to the truth and not add ammunition to the conspiracy theorists, which I understand are rather plentiful in the United States.
If your only tool is a hammer, you'll approach every problem as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow