Article: Dutch officials say faulty altimeter played role in Turkish plane crash
published on 04.03.2009
by s425331
Wednesday, February 25, 2009; 1030h: A Boeing 737-800 of Turkish Airlines crashes near Schiphol Airport. The results were 9 deceased and many dozens of wounded people . One week after, on Wednesday, the 4th of March, the first conclusions about the Turkish Airlines crash at Schiphol Airport were published by Schiphol Airport and a few other Dutch institutions. They mentioned that a faulty altimeter, following by a pilot failure was the cause of the crash.
Directly after these conclusions were drawn, the Turkish media claimed that the Dutch authorities pushed their conclusions in such a way that all responsibility for the crash is put in the shoes of the pilots and cabin crew of Turkish Airlines, most probably in order to avoid damage claims. The reaction of the Turkish transportation minister was that “it would be wrong to make assumptions and blame anybody”, since a plane crash has many aspects and all angles needs to be enlightened before conclusions can be drawn.
In my view, the Turkish transportation minister has a point here, unfortunately due to the freedom to speak: for all parties who are concerned with this airplane crash, it is legally not forbidden to publish their opinions about the reasons for the crash. According to the Functional Tradition, freedom (and thus freedom to speak) leads to rationality, which again leads to maximization of self-interest, which could be opposed to social interest/morality.
In other words, while an internationally working, independent research agency is still investigating the crash, Schiphol Airport and Turkish Airlines are figuratively fighting with heavy weighting claims and statements about each other. By doing so, they are trying to save their own reputation and to avoid damage claims; not knowing that this self-interest seeking may hurt the dozens of (relatives of the) victims of the crash who want to hear the real story behind the crash.
Therefore, I am in favor of internationally set social rules which will limit the freedom to speak for parties who are concerned with accidents which have enormous consequences for a lot of people. At least these parties should be limited in their freedom to draw conclusions about these accidents, while independent organizations are still investigating their cases.
Link to the lecture:
Funtional Tradition and self interest seeking character trait of human beings and organizations, and it’s application within the Turkish Airlines crash
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11 comments:
A set of rules for such major accidents won't be wrong. However what are the criteria for those rules?
One explanation of why mr. Van Vollenhoven told the world there was a malfunction in the altitude meter was to warn Boeing. Because the airplane of Turkish airlines was not the only type of that airplane, and it wasn't the first time it had problems with its altitude meter. Isn't it therefore an obligation for mr. Van Vollenhoven to warn the world about the malfunctioning of altitude meters in those kinds of airplanes. Shouldn't such a situation overrule a set of rules, when they were there, to protect more people than were involved in the actual crash. In this case it could be thousands of people.
Therefore, aren't the consequences of not speaking in this case even bigger than speaking out lot preliminary results? Because those results were preliminary, which was also stated in the interview.
Harm van Kemenade
s305093
Although I agree that these ‘international rules’ mentioned in the principal comment could prevent the parties from saying things they might regret later and prevent them from hurting the victims (and relatives), I do not agree with the concept. I strongly support freedom of speech. Every party has the right to say what they believe, and such rules would only infringe on ones freedom. This does not mean that I think that their claims of accusation are the right thing to do. They should support their claims with hard evidence before fingers are pointed. And as human beings they owe it to the victims of this crash to find out what the cause of the crash is instead of pointing fingers and trying to avoid damage claims. Morally speaking, they should find the cause of the crash and support the victims before thinking of any financial matters. However they still have the right to speak their mind, especially if the apparent problem has occurred more frequently, and making Boeing aware of the potential problem could potentially save many more lives.
Vincent Jurgens
s720937
In my opinion, the Turkish transportation minister is right when he claims that ‘it would be wrong to make assumptions and blame anybody’ since assumptions are more often than not based on guessing rather than actual facts. One should always refrain from premature conclusions until all relevant facts are known and presented.
Following the functional tradition, which states that in reality it is hard to say how a person is motivated to act moral since there is a gap between the individual and the social justification of morality, one way to interpret Schiphol’s Airport accusations is as merely acting out of self-interest. Hence, this action serves as a clear-cut example of acting out of rational self-interest since the airport’s primary interest is the preservation of its international reputation and consequently is opposed to both social interest and morality. Therefore, a minimum set of social rules is indeed required.
René Megens
s113313
I understand the point you are trying to make. But morality is based on granting freedom through the least amount of rules.
By creating a rule that prohibits you to speak your mind when an acccident occurs seems irrational. I agree with Harm on this, which kinds of accidents are you talking about? When can we not speak about them? up till 2 weeks after? or never? can we talk to our family about this, or is that also not allowed?
Also what about legalization, how will you control this new rule? Will you inprison media for doing their job? In a western society where freedom stands tall you cannot limit people's opinions. People's opinions are just that and until proven in a court of law otherwise all opinions are correct.
Moral constraint should keep you from saying disrespectfull things, and it would be very unproffesional of you to draw conclusions yet But you cannot punish somebody for expressing their opinion.
James Winkelhorst
s701304
I think I have to agree with Harm. A basic set of rules of how to deal with major accidents won't be wrong, but it wouldn't surprise me if they already excisted.
Something in the original post puzzles me though. "A independent international team". Is our own independent authority in the form of the safety board under management of mr. Van Vollenhoven not enough? Furthermore as each country has its own set of safety standards it would be hard to form an international team. Also since situation like this do not often happen it might well have been that we called in the help of international experts as is so often the case in airplane crashes.
Basically I would take an utilitarian approach here. One would have to consider if not revealing the information in the investigation will give more benefits than not giving the information. The problems with this approach however that is hard to measure how much a life costs or the pain of not knowing why it happened.
In all honesty I don't think that the independent board of safety would have considered revealing the information if they were not sure about their conclusion.
I partly agree with Harm that the consequences of not speaking are bigger than informing the company about the malfunctioning in the altitude meter. However, if we speak in terms of 'what we owe others' I think mr. Van Vollenhoven shouldn't have done this in an open interview. Because I think the investigation team owe the victims and their relatives the real cause behind the crash. This doesn’t mean just preliminary results. They should have waited with giving information until everything was investigated properly, and the real cause behind the crash was discovered. This will create less chaos.
And I understand what James is trying to say, it may be difficult controlling the rule, but everything is difficult in the beginning. If there is a general rule for this, and all parties involved work along it will work I think. It does not mean everybody has to keep their mouth shut, but it’s just that the investigation team should be more careful when providing new information.
In conclusion, I am also in favor of setting international rules which limits the action of giving preliminary results of accidents which have enormous consequences for all parties involved, including the victims and their relatives.
to s425331:
So let me get this straight; you are saying
"set [international] social rules which will limit the freedom to speak for parties who are concerned with accidents" in order not to "hurt the dozens of (relatives of the) victims of the crash who want to hear the real story behind the crash"
Correct?
If so, okay, it's an interesting vision.
However, I am wondering, where is the moral wrong doing in your case? You want to initiate this set of rules based on... what kind of moral wrong doing? Which principle is neither Turkish Airlines nor Schiphol acting upon or not acknowledging?
Is this 'hurting of the victims' (/relatives) going against the morality of what we owe others according to you? Or does it go against Right in some way that I am now unable to see?
I would say if one is not deliberately deceiving, then soit, there is no moral wrong doing in this case, not even in a broad sense.
Furthermore, your suggestion implies to enforce something that definitely goes against Right (Freedom of Speech).
Suppose you are an executive at Schiphol; Assume that after the crash you notice that suddenly the first 2 days after the terrible accident travels have gone down (or cancellations have gone up, whatever) by an exceptional high percentage due to the crash. Would you not want to have the right to defend your company to say that the crash was not your fault?
The flaw of your idea is that it implies that you as an executive should take the losses of something that you had nothing to do with!
so.. no.. I don't see your point (yet)... On which grounds should we initiate these rules? Please refute my arguments, I am curious where my line of reasoning goes wrong.
Kind regards,
X
in my opinion, yes, everyone has freedom, but we also have to take care of others who still live in the society, because we are not living alone. we have responsibility of this society, we have to contribute to our society.
so it is therefore an obligation for mr. Van Vollenhoven to warn the world about the malfunctioning of altitude meters in those kinds of airplanes.otherwise if the same situation occur on Mr Van vollenhoven, what is his ecpectation from society?
jin liang
s561332
In terms of functional tradition, all parties have the right to express their opinion for the crash. So from the text quoted “internationally set social rules which will limit the freedom to speak for parties who are concerned with accidents which have enormous consequences for a lot of people.” I think this violated the “freedom to speak” since even such a tragedy happened, people are all from different regions, and even they have different cultures, beliefs etc. So they have the right to reveal their minds. And in this way, it would inversely can stimuli the relevant agency to investigate the real reason quickly for an accident to prevent different kinds of sayings. Furthermore, I don’t think it will hurt the victims if different claims revealed. Since the victims’ family or relatives are all expecting to hear the real reason as soon as quick and different claims also can help the investigation party to analyze the accident from different angles to consider.
This may be a good solution, but I think you cannot make this sure with some rules. It is not possible to set clear boundaries in what the parties are able to say and what they are not. I even think this is not morally right. Everybody has the right to speak in public, and say what they want to say. Even if there are some independent parties who conclude something, there are always people who have their own meaning.
I think, a better solution would be, let an independent party do the research too. They can tell in public what they found out and what their conclusions are. Now there are three stories of three different parties, but people can believe what they want to believe (so they can choose which story they believe). This way, nobody is neglected, which is morally right.
Although everyone has the freedom to speak from their point of view, telling the turth is most important to public and families of decedent. I think it is not proper to blame the other party in order to pretect their own reputation, but cooperate with each other to investigate the reason cause this drama. they have to consider this question in the aspect of social responsibility.
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