We all learn, that is what experience in the cockpit is for. We all make mistakes, every single day. Sometimes you get lucky, sometimes it is a crewmember putting a stop to it, sometimes ATC vectors you around even though you were gonna go through the cell. Pilots are risk mitigators, that is what we should be doing every single day. Have I done stupid stuff that I regret in an airplane? Hell yes! Have I done the right thing even though it costs the company time, or money, and I received backlash for it? Absolutely! We all love flying, thats why we are here, but when I learned that this is a job, and I will never let a company • me out for my love of flying, and use it to pay me crappy wages, or treat me like garbage, I no longer cared about what doing the right thing would do to the company. Not to drag the Akron Hawker crash into this, but we will have a thread with the NTSB report, and we will be echoing some of the same sentiments in there, as we are here, and has we have in many other crash investigations.
Hearing the right seater buy off on the captains insane idea to compression start the right engine is scary, but I have seen it happen in smaller capacities. A low time seat warmer has no idea if what the CA is saying is proper, or smart, or normal in lots of cases. Sure they can determine that flying into a mountain is wrong, but do they know the specific operating procedures of their aircraft? Lots of times they are relying on the experience of the captain, as they should be able to, but we have seen bonehead captains do things to kill everyone on board the aircraft more than once.