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Comment by PaulRobinson | Hacker News Reader

I am confident that authorities (and insurance companies), will want to apportion blame.

However, I want to just stress: while there are some known poor conditions tech can help pilots avoid (for example, thunder storms - pilots avoid those clouds for good reason), there are many types of turbulence which can not be predicted or detected by ground or air based systems.

We are all individually responsible for our behaviour on the aircraft. Regardless of the seatbelt sign status, keep it fastened when seated. If it's lit, stay seated. If it isn't, minimise the time you're not seated. Yes, it's not great on long haul, but the difference between smooth air and being thrown around by an air pocket is seconds. This severity is thankfully very rare, but that doesn't mean any of us should not consider it a risk when deciding how to behave in a plane cabin.

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> I am confident that authorities (and insurance companies), will want to apportion blame.

In general this isn't how airline investigations actually work. They instead use the concept of "just cause" meaning that the assumption is that the system failed, and that any mistake is the child of many parents, none whom are at fault on their own. This is why flying is so safe, no one in the entire system is afraid to report failures or mistakes because the assumption is to get better, not to punish why something is bad.

There may be a single final failure but why did was the system set up to allow that to happen at all in the first place is the question. In this case there will certainly be investigations at every level from the flight crew and cabin crew training, to their sleep schedule, to the forecasts, to the flight path planning, to the policies around passengers moving around the cabin, to even how the plane was balanced on passenger and cargo loading. There's going to be a combination of factors no doubt, but no one's going to get fired (some individuals may resign or retire from the stress of handling such a situation, which no one would fault them for). Singapore just got voted the #1 airline in the world, they will take this as seriously as if the entire plane went down.

These findings will then be applied to every major airline and aircraft in the world so that it never happens again. With a few very public recent incidents, any specific type of airline accident tends to happen only once.

Apportioning blame is one thing the authorities will not want to do:

"The TSIB is the air, marine and rail accidents and incidents investigation authority in Singapore. Its mission is to promote transport safety through the conduct of independent investigations into air, marine and rail accidents and incidents.

The sole objective of TSIB’s safety investigations is the prevention of transport accidents and incidents. The safety investigations do not seek to apportion blame or liability. Accordingly, TSIB reports should not be used to assign blame or determine liability."

And:

"The sole objective of the investigation of an accident or incident under these Regulations is the prevention of future accidents and incidents. It is not the purpose of such an investigation to apportion blame or liability.

Accordingly, it is inappropriate that [UK] AAIB reports should be used to assign fault or blame or determine liability, since neither the investigation nor the reporting process has been undertaken for that purpose."

Apportioning blame is how you lose transparency in air accident investigations.

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