Discussing accidents that don't involve fatalities generally isn't difficult, but when fatalities are involved, sensitivities tend to be fairly raw and easily irritated.
In 47 years of flying, I've known a number of folks who were killed in airplane accidents, some of those folks I considered to be good friends. In almost every one of those cases, I heard speculation on what happened, almost always assigning pilot error as the causative factor of the accident. In cases where fatalities are involved, this sort of speculation can and often does cause even more grief for loved ones and friends.
Perhaps as bad is that such speculation can sometimes feed the litigation machine, and none of us wants to go there.
Also, I've seen at least two accidents with fatalities in which the NTSB missed some key information, and came to completely inaccurate conclusions. So, an NTSB report, at least on a GA accident, may or may not offer the correct answers.
Frankly, it is indeed a rare accident which wasn't largely the result of pilot error, and I think most pilots realize that. While our discussions may seem reasonable and an effort to learn so that we can avoid a similar fate, it's important that not everyone reading these forums is a pilot.
Please keep this in mind in these discussions. My dear friend Tom Wardlegh told me once that if you ever talk about a fatal aircraft accident in a roomful of people, there will be someone in that group who knew someone killed in that accident, so be very careful what you say and how it's presented. A couple weeks later, I went to an FAA safety seminar and a FSDO Inspector got up and discussed a recent fatal accident. The audience response was not positive, and nobody learned much there.
MTV
