A pilot error...

It’s been over 30 years since the deadly Erebus disaster killed 257 people of the Air NZ Flight TE901, yet the controversy is still ripe around what exactly happened on the 28^th November 1979, when the DC10 crashed into Mt Erebus on Ross Island, Antarctica.

It was in the context of this tragic story that I first heard the term: “pilot error”.

While the term still tends to be used in air-accidents, there’s been an effort to replace it with “human error”, presumably to deflect blame-attribution solely from the pilots and reflect on the fact that anybody in support-capacity may’ve contribute to the events.

In BIM, there is a similar (though thankfully much less deadly) term that is often used unqualified:

“User fault”.

So, while I’m grateful for expert comments provided in response to my question regarding the twisted columns (*) and practical advice coming from various software supporters to get me through the problem, I’m unprepared to blankly accept that this ‘little’ incident is solely of my own making.

IFC is widely promoted as an ‘international standard’ for coordination of AEC project information and as a system (including QA of how various packages export to it) should be much better controlled.

The threshold for ‘user error’ needs to be set much higher, consistency and integrity of data assured against user-mis-action.

I.e. more ‘idiot proof’.

* See post from the 7^th November