Lex Anteinternet: Peculiarized violence and American society. Looki...: Because of the horrific senseless tragedy in Newton Connecticut, every pundit and commentator in the US is writing on the topic of what cau...That essay came in the wake of a tragic mass killing and it looked at root causes, at a time during which a lot of public commentary was focused on proposed efforts that would not address them.
I mention that now, as we've just had yet another example of a senseless mass killing of a type we've seen several of in recent years, but we don't seem to see much proposed in the way of doing something about it. That is, the co-pilot of the Germanwings plane that crashed into the Alps this week turns out to be mass murderer.
This isn't the first time in recent years where a commercial pilot has chosen to kill himself and all of his passengers. It's totally inexcusable on every level. A question remains about this, that being, why is so much attention focused on controlling implements for which the legislative control of which will not have a demonstrative effect, while there hasn't been any outcry about whom is allowed to pilot hundreds in the sky?
Yes, I know there's commercial licenses, but even on the simple applicable standards level, it would appear that around the globe various pilots simply don't measure up to the American standard. They should, and there's no reason that a universal, very high, standard can't apply to all commercial air carrier pilots. But beyond that, perhaps the time has come to place these men and women through some sort of psychological battery every six months. It won't catch them all, but it might catch some who are getting dicey, or even just sloppy. And maybe the time has come for a third pilot to be in the cabin, just in case. These are big complicated planes and there's been a lot of accidents, which might be reason enough, and might help to keep something like this from reoccuring.
No comments:
Post a Comment