Originally Posted by
ladder1423
In general Comair and other airlines should take the blame. What were the pilots talking about before their takeoff? They were talking about finding other jobs. Now why were they talking about finding other jobs? It is because their quality of life at Comair like most other airlines flat out sucks. When a company does not take care of its employees, they are going to look for another job which in turn detracts from their performance whether they are a waiter, policeman, or pilot. It is a known fact the three most stressful things to deal with in a person's life is 1. Divorce 2. Death of family member/friend 3. Change of Job. Nobody wants to willingly change jobs or even talk about it. The pilots were talking about changing jobs because along with every other pilot with some "decent" amount of time on the job are not happy at Comair. Moral is low and unfortunately the airlines do not realize safety is compromised when simple quality of life issues are not addressed. No doubt there was mistakes made, but WHY these mistakes were made is the bigger question that nobody( NTSB, FAA, Airlines, etc.) is looking at.
Point taken about the quality of life, or lack thereof as the case may be...but seriously blaming the airlines for this accident is nothing short of a cop-out. The crew members are not just performing a service for the pax in the back...THEY are in that tube as well. Notwithstanding all the BS that DL/Comair has put their employees through, do you really propose to blame them for him getting so distracted by poor labor relations that he ultimately killed all the pax, the F/A and himself? If that was where his head was at that morning than he was not fit to fly and should have called in sick. FAR's and ATC aside, no one, other than the other flight crew member (F/O) can physically override the captain from manipulating the controls of HIS/HER aircraft...period.
And for the record, I hate to make it seem like Im dragging this dead man's name and reputation through the mud, because thats not my intention. However the sympathy that we all feel for him should not get in the way of the facts.