Wow, by all accounts, it seems the union wants to protect the pilots from the consequences of their actions, even if doing so means preventing the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) from documenting the causes of the near-accident on JFK's runways to reduce the risk of similar events in the future.<p>In other words, the union seems to be looking out for its members <i>at the expense of everyone's safety</i>.
The submission title is misleading; I'm not sure why the word "recorded" was dropped. The pilots have already been interviewed by the NTSB. The NTSB then asked for recorded interviews which, according to the pilot's association, has not been the standard.<p>I think this is a more nuanced position than most of the comments led me to believe. The pilot's association believes that "recording of interviews lead to less candid responses from those witnesses," which I think is a legitimate concern.<p>If the goal is safety, then the pilots need to feel comfortable being candid. If they feel that any wrong phrasing/word could be a legal liability they will behave accordingly.
"Based on everything we know so far, the fault for this lies squarely with the American pilots"<p>Do we? The discussion has VERY carefully avoided any discussion of what happened. Pinning the blame entirely on the pilots is what I'd do if I wanted to avoid pinning the blame on the controllers, or just wanted to write an anti-union screed.<p>I clicked on "about" and the author has absolutely no professional skills or qualifications related to the airline industry in any form at all, but his mind is certainly made up already about a "deep in the weeds" technical issue. I would rather hear the authors strongly held beliefs about K8S cluster design or ELK stack dashboards; its not like he's any less trained or qualified to hold those opinions.
This article is prejudging the incident, and then criticizes the pilots over objecting to a detail that plausibly would be fuel for a prejudging Internet mob <i>like this article is demonstrating</i>.<p>I don't know whether audio recording is appropriate, but this article and some of the Internet pitchforks it's already prompting have shifted my initial kneejerk reaction to the headline... reminding me not to prejudge, nor to be so susceptible to Internet manipulation.<p>FWIW, aviation safety is party built upon encouraging a culture of professionalism, and sometimes involves confidentiality and protecting people who speak up about problems. For example, FAA/NASA ASRS: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_Safety_Reporting_System" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_Safety_Reporting_Syst...</a><p>(Disclosure: I've done software work for aviation safety programs.)
Ridiculous. The NTSB should push for cockpit voice recorders to last longer than the current 2 hours.<p>We have 19-hour flights now. Voice recorders should last 24 hours at least.
It’s news article titles like “Reckless American 777 Pilots Refuse Recorded NTSB Interviews” that fuel this sort of pushback that the pilots are giving about interviews.<p>NTSB investigative materials are not ‘privileged’ in the same way accident investigations in the US DOD are (<a href="https://medium.com/code-for-america/john-allspaw-getting-the-messy-details-is-critical-59e641aa0a77" rel="nofollow">https://medium.com/code-for-america/john-allspaw-getting-the...</a>) but perhaps they ought to be.
My knee-jerk reaction is "they should be recorded" so I write this to attempt to steel-man the alternative.<p>A core concept of safety is arriving at a root cause in an effort to continuously improve. This won't happen in an adversarial fact finding as the interests of the participants diverge instead of converge. Two key concepts here are Psychological Safety and Just Culture.<p>What could be adversarial about just recording the interview? While NTSB's argument for recording interviews is facially sound, it represents a change from previous practice. Further, it represents opening a collaborative and open fact-finding conversation to third parties who have adversarial interests. Key concepts here are "Don't talk to cops" [2] and Nothing to Hide [3]<p>It is ironic that the NTSB's interest in recording is in part driven by a lack of data caused by no-one at the airport pulling the Andon cord [4] at the time of the near miss. The cockpit voice recorders only record two hours. Since the flight continued to take off and flew for more than 2 hours, the voice data was lost. The NTSB seeks to record for "highest degree of accuracy, completeness, and efficiency" the pilots many days after the event based on their memory as a witness of themselves [4].<p>0. <a href="https://www.ccl.org/articles/leading-effectively-articles/what-is-psychological-safety-at-work/" rel="nofollow">https://www.ccl.org/articles/leading-effectively-articles/wh...</a><p>1. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_culture" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_culture</a><p>2. <a href="https://www.learnliberty.org/blog/advice-from-cops-dont-talk-to-cops/" rel="nofollow">https://www.learnliberty.org/blog/advice-from-cops-dont-talk...</a><p>3. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_to_hide_argument" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_to_hide_argument</a><p>4. <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4183265/" rel="nofollow">https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4183265/</a>
I would probably do the same and if I was a lawyer I would probably advise it too. They have already ended their careers, there is nothing to be gained for them from being questioned. And the less videos the better for whatever they will be trying to do in their future careers. Let the justice run its course.<p>> Is their refusal to be interviewed illegal? No, not as of now. Is it unethical? Absolutely, in my opinion.<p>Except nobody who means anything in this case cares about your opinion. Neither the pilots nor the judge who will take the case. Ethical or unethical in <i>your</i> opinion, any person in so much trouble has right to make decisions to defend themselves. If you believe in Constitution you have to believe in peoples' right to not incriminate themselves and you have to believe it is not unethical to use what Constitution affords to everybody.
> As a result of the flight crew’s repeated unwillingness to proceed with a recorded interview, subpoenas for their testimony have been issued.<p>They’ll get their interviews.
After seeing some of the work the NTSB has done over the years, I've grown to respect them.<p>Their job has collectively saved a huge number of lives. Flying is measurably safer because of them, not just in the US but world-wide. We know so much more about flight and flight safety because of it.<p>Refusing to be interviewed with them, and their union interfering feels very slimy. Pilots are responsible for all the lives on board, and they need to be held accountable when they make a mistake - even if it doesn't end in a loss of life.
The fact that the cockpit voice recorder only stores 2 hours of data is crazy to me.<p>Having long recordings is most important in cases where the plane doesn’t crash - if it crashes, the CVR will stop recording anyway.<p>So perhaps airlines should introduce a secondary CVR, that records for much longer, but isn’t as resilient? There’s plenty of cheap, consumer-grade equipment that would do the job fine.
There’s a simple reason for them not interviewing. No upside for the pilots, and the information could be used against them.<p>I find myself agreeing with the union’s reasoning. There’s no justification for recorded audio. Stenographers are fine for all legal applications of authoritative transcripts.<p>If the air traffic controllers still had a real union they’d be doing the same thing.
Am I the only one to note that recorded interviews are a new procedure, cited in the article?<p>I don't know how pilot investigations are conducted, but in less critical fields a simple investigation with a bias against particular parties can quickly turn into "here is some recorded evidence that.. " then the court can charge someone which tends to appease the desire to dig further. Not saying that's what is going on i have no clue, but let's consider those pilots are doing something perfectly legal and the fact it is legal is a stronger judgment basis than some article making it sound like public safety is being neglected by rogue pilots.
The investigation can be about finding the truth or about finding justice - not both.<p>The past success in improving air transport is based on proceedings where getting to the truth of the matter is the highest value.
The NTSB is a government agency representing the government. You should never talk to these agencies unless forced to. There is zero upside for you and lots of downside.
This is the type of BS that leads people to hate unions.<p>In a very narrow sense, it is good strategy to object to anything that isn't included in the current negotiated contract, and to demand "concessions" for adding things.<p>But when that stretches to "airplane pilots union actively hinders investigation into near-crash", the public shouldn't support the union.
Court Reporters do not need an audio recording to produce an accurate transcript. Their certification requires them to be able to track 4 voices simultaneously at a certain word per minute rate into their Stenograph. I do not find the pilot’s request unreasonable and the NTSB can have the interview if they drop their unnecessary requirement.
PSA: Don't talk to the police: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE</a>
> The reason interviews are so important is because there’s no cockpit voice recorder (CVR) of the incident, as that only records for two hours, and is then overwritten; since the pilots continued flying to London, this critical evidence isn’t available to investigators<p>JFC. How are they allowed to have such useless technology for something so important?