The Australian: Human error biggest risk of flying - by Charles Bremmer

For the complete report from The Australian click on this link

Human error biggest risk of flying - by Charles Bremmer

This has not been a good week for airline pilots. Four American ones - all employed by Delta, have been suspended for two blunders. Now we hear that Air France, the national carrier, has accused its pilots of dangerously sloppy flying.On Monday, a pair from Delta got muddled and put their Boeing down on a taxi-way at Atlanta instead of the runway. The other two, flying a Northwest Airlines Airbus from San Diego, failed to notice that they had flown past Minneapolis, their destination. That incident has sparked a furore while the more dangerous Atlanta bungle has been largely ignored. In the case of Air France, the story is complicated. The airline management is reacting to unrest among pilots over the way they have been blamed for recent incidents and accidents and especially the AF447 crash. Yesterday, the management sent all crew a memo headed: "Enough argument and false debate on flight safety". They accused "over-confident" crew of ignoring standard procedures and risking their aircraft. The management said it was especially unhappy with the way that pilots had blamed the AF447 disaster on the Airbus A330 and on faulty airline practices. "There are no procedures to correct, no new ones to create," it said.