Originally Posted by
Ronin
I am not so sure the pressure was on for him to maintain his legal amount of flying hours and get the plane back to where it should be within a certain time frame although I would have to re-watch the documentary for the details.
The senior pilot was under pressure to take off.
Because of the delay caused by the appalling weather his maximum flying hours where rapidly approaching and that meant flying in another crew and off loading all the passengers into a hotel if he went over time.
He made a call to take off without permission and hit the other plane resulting in a huge loss of life.
100 % pilot error. Nothing to do with the state of the plane or even the weather.
He discarded the Standard Operating Procedure and all died.
Would I fly KLM once the facts came out ?
Absolutely. The Captain was 100 % wrong.
Further more it was discovered that the Junior pilot had questioned the Seniors pilots decision to take off but was too scared to do anything about it because of the Senior pilots rank.
Turned out that the Senior pilot had massive hours up and was an instructor.
The rules have now been changed so a Junior pilot can over rule a Senior pilot if the Junior pilot feels the Senior pilot is placing the plane in jeopardy.
Once again human error causes many plane crashes.