Incidents with factor of FO not challenging Pilot

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dajop

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I was having a discussion with one of the global HR people in the company about "courage and candour". She was pointing out that in some cultures it is difficult for subordinates to demonstrate this and challenge their superiors. I vaguely recalled that this has been a factor in a number of aviation incidents with serious consequences, in that First Officers in some cultures tend not to challenge their Captains. IIRC this may have been a factor in the SQ accident in Taiwan a few years ago, is anyone aware of any other incidents where this was a contributing factor, and/or have any references to these?

I promised to follow up with some examples (silly me, creating work for myself) so any assistance would be appreciated!
 
Easy, the Tenerife disaster, in which two 747s collided on the runway:
Tenerife disaster - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
On hearing this, the KLM flight engineer expressed his concern about the Pan Am not being clear of the runway, repeating this concern a few seconds later, but he was overruled by the captain. The flight engineer did not explicitly challenge him on this decision.
The lower fuselage of the KLM plane hit the upper fuselage of the Pan Am plane, ripping apart the center of the Pan Am jet nearly directly above the wing. The KLM plane then slammed into the ground belly-up 150 m past the point of collision and slid down the runway.
 
Probably a third of the accidents I've seen shown on Air Crash Investigation (on Foxtel's National Geographic channel and now on free-to-air) involve this scenario.

You could look up the NTSB database or FAA database for accidents
 
Lindsay Wilson said:
...on Foxtel's National Geographic channel...
Just wanted to point out that there is a "LCC equivalent to Foxtel", Selectv (selectv.com.au) where I also enjoy watching Air Crash Investigations on NatGeo.
 
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