This is from Wayne Hale's blog, a former Space Shuttle Program director, and flight director for 40 shuttle missions. Do you agree or disagree with the author's conclusion?
When doing an accident (or close call) investigation, I’ve been told to ask ‘why’ seven times before getting to root cause. The root cause, for example, can never be “the bolt broke”; a good accident investigator would ask “why did the bolt break”. Otherwise, the corrective action would not prevent the next problem. Simply putting another bolt in might lead to the same failure again. Finding out the bolt was not strong enough for the application and putting in a stronger bolt, that is the better solution – and so on.
The Russians had a spectacular failure of a Proton rocket a while back – check out the video on YouTube of a huge rocket lifting off and immediately flipping upside down to rush straight into the ground. The ‘root cause’ was announced that some poor technician had installed the guidance gyro upside down. Reportedly the tech was fired. I wonder if they still send people to the gulag over things like that. But that is not the root cause: better ask why did the tech install the gyro upside down? Were the blueprints wrong? Did the gyro box come from the manufacturer with the ‘this side up’ decal in the wrong spot? Then ask – why were the prints wrong, or why was the decal in the wrong place. If you want to fix the problem you have to dig deeper. And a real root cause is always a human, procedural, cultural, issue. Never ever hardware.
So it is with pilot error. Pilot error is never ever a root cause. Better to ask: was the training wrong? Were the controls wrong? Did the pilot get briefed on some other problem that cause distraction and made him/her fly the plane badly?
https://waynehale.wordpress.com/2015/07/29/pilot-error-is-never-root-cause/
When doing an accident (or close call) investigation, I’ve been told to ask ‘why’ seven times before getting to root cause. The root cause, for example, can never be “the bolt broke”; a good accident investigator would ask “why did the bolt break”. Otherwise, the corrective action would not prevent the next problem. Simply putting another bolt in might lead to the same failure again. Finding out the bolt was not strong enough for the application and putting in a stronger bolt, that is the better solution – and so on.
The Russians had a spectacular failure of a Proton rocket a while back – check out the video on YouTube of a huge rocket lifting off and immediately flipping upside down to rush straight into the ground. The ‘root cause’ was announced that some poor technician had installed the guidance gyro upside down. Reportedly the tech was fired. I wonder if they still send people to the gulag over things like that. But that is not the root cause: better ask why did the tech install the gyro upside down? Were the blueprints wrong? Did the gyro box come from the manufacturer with the ‘this side up’ decal in the wrong spot? Then ask – why were the prints wrong, or why was the decal in the wrong place. If you want to fix the problem you have to dig deeper. And a real root cause is always a human, procedural, cultural, issue. Never ever hardware.
So it is with pilot error. Pilot error is never ever a root cause. Better to ask: was the training wrong? Were the controls wrong? Did the pilot get briefed on some other problem that cause distraction and made him/her fly the plane badly?
https://waynehale.wordpress.com/2015/07/29/pilot-error-is-never-root-cause/
