737 CA makes more because it was negotiated and the party negotiating had enough strength to play that card. And now the deck has been reshuffled and the other player has a better hand.. thus lower pay for 737 drivers and in many cases, loss of pensions... simple case of having the power to play the hand. Witness Johnny O's ability to fill classes even though I have never heard one single line pilot say anything good about him.

Second, as a check airman, I didn't expect perfection and in fact, on a check ride, I preferred to see a few errors and watch how the crew worked together. No errors and I didn't know if it was the one time these guys were the aces of the bases.. but if they erred and recovered (monitor, challenge, respond, etc.. all the CRM and stick and rudder stuff) then I knew it was a good crew.

And I guess we have to define perfection. Is it a flight that departs on time and arrives on time and no altitude deviations? Or is it something more realistic? Did the Capt have to ask the F/O what the taxi instructions were after maneuvering out of the ramp? No confusion over what ATC said?

Granted, one strives for perfection and the goal is always to improve... but perfection? I don't think so. And the gulf between expectation and reality may be one of the prime causes for a lot of modern heartburn.

Your coffee pot.. it is a machine and two things we know from HuFacts is 1) things break and 2) people make mistakes. That doesn't excuse mistakes but it does put us in a frame of defense against errors.

James Reason developed a matrix to assign culpability that moves from the left where the individual is NOT responsible to the right where it changes from an error to a willful deviation.

IF *I* provide *you* with the wrong tools, the wrong checklist, the wrong procedures and *you* fail, who is at fault? Who is culpable?

Example.. years ago, we taught stall recoveries but limited thrust to 'max takeoff thrust' so as not to 'overboost the engines.' That mixes a lot of stuff.. you don't overboost a jet engine. You can go above 'normal limits' but an overboost is a mostly a recip term. And unless you consider stalls a normal event, normal limits do not apply. Unfortunately the procedure was taught and well learned by the Air Florida crew and when they were stalling, they NEVER pushed the throttles up. The learned and did the procedure they were taught. What I am surprised at is some operators still teach takeoff thrust as maximum allowed on a stall recovery. DUMB...

Perfection.. in typing this, I have made a few mistakes and had to go back and re-type it. I caught the error. To use the jargon, I mitigated the error.

One final.. in countless forums, you see a repeated mistake where guys are talking about "losers" and invariably type "loosers". So, what mistake is being made? Typing, education, spelling skills, erudition, poor reading skills? What? Or do we just chalk it up to them being 'loosers'?