Ethics and Safety:
A great many ethical and safety issues are raised by examining the crash of American Airlines Flight 191. In the simplest terms, maintaining good ethical conduct requires a person to differentiate between what is right and what is wrong and follow the course that the person determines is correct. Frequently, it is not so simple; right and wrong are not clearly marked, and a person must use his best judgment. Some of the ethical questions associated with the crash are listed below.
1. Did the FAA ignore its responsibility to the airline passenger by not requiring that all serious structural damages by reported, regardless of cause?
2. Why did all parties involved, manufacturer, airlines, and FAA, seem to consider maintenance as a secondary issue?
3. Should McDonnell Douglas have reported the maintenance difficulties to the other airlines operating DC-10-10s?
4. Should McDonnell Douglas have warned the other airlines of the maintenance problems experienced by Continental Airlines?
5. Was it the responsibility of the engineers who developed ECO R-2693 to make sure that their procedure worked and could be properly implemented?
6. Was it the responsibility of the maintenance personnel to communicate difficulties with ECO R-2693 to the engineering staff?
7. When considering possible failure modes, how small must the probability of an event be to ignore the event?
8. Should manufacturers be required to be omnipotent? Should they be required to predict all possible scenarios in which their product will be used, misused, maintained, or mis-maintained?
9. Should there be a separate certification for maintenance procedures for vehicles used in public transportation?