You're absolutely right. None of OUR families were onboard, but here's the hypothetical . . .what if the captain's wife or the co-pilot's family were aviation enthusiasts who read this forum? What would THEY deduce from this thread?
I'll give the most honest answer possible.
When it comes to reading an NTSB report and reacting to it, it's man versus environment versus machine. You've really got to leave emotion out of it.
It's pilots talking to pilots.
Break it down to the facts, causal factors, what happened, when it happened and why it happened.
That's how we live. That's how we'll survive.
Someone you know on this website, perhaps even multiple people are going to die in an airplane crash. It's statistically impossible for it NOT to occur, but since we're pilots, we need to learn.
Now the following is an entirely seperate issue:
Next time you fly commercial, are you going to query the pilot if they PFT/PFJ'd for Gulfstream? If so, I'd be curious if you receive a refund.
In professional aviation, people will feel you out the second you step into the cockpit. I don't think I've done a rotation yet without the captain asking in the first few sentences after the introduction, "So what's your background? Military? Civilian?"
I can pretty much tell you that if I told a captain that i went to Gulfstream for 500 hours, then miraculously got hired by my airline, I'd have a level of scrutiny that I couldn't fathom?
Is it right? I dunno.
Is it valid? I dunno.
But it happens.
At the bottom of the rotation where it lists your captains, there's a line that says:
A 123456 DOE, JOHN FITZGERALD
Time for ROTS Completed: PIC-056:41 737A-056:41 737B-0:00
B 456123 BOBB, JIMMY JOE
Time for ROTS Completed: 737B-GT300
(GT = "Greater Than")
(A = Captain B=FO)
(ROTS = Rotations or trips)
Why is that there? Currency? High mins?! Showing you the basic experience level of the person you're going to be flying with in order to incorporate that into the pre-flight brief?