25th of February 2009, an airplane of Turkish Airlines crashed near Schiphol. This resulted in 9 fatalities and 86 people were injured. After investigation, the cause of the crash was the defect of the left-hand radio altimeter of Boeing 737-800, flight 1951. The flight recorder showed that the same altimeter had the same problems twice during the last eight landings. Why did Turkish Airlines not further investigate the problem of the defect altimeter? This leads to question whether Turkish Airlines acted morally wrong.
When looking at the business discourse about individual profit maximising, they did not act wrong if they looked to the short term profit. It is not advantageous for an airline company to have unplanned maintenance on an airplane, since the whole flight programme needs to be changed. Not only the maintenance will increase costs, also another plane is required to take over flights of the plane that needs to be repaired. Although, Turkish Airlines should have taken a look to the long run: when defect mechanisms may lead to crashes, substantially higher costs will be involved. There will also be a decrease in customers due to the reduction of trust in Turkish Airlines, which will definitely not lead to profit maximising.
When looking at the moral discourse, Turkish Airlines acted morally wrong. They were aware of the fact that the airplane faced the problem with the altimeter already twice. Therefore, they should have done better investigation on the altimeter. In the airplane-business, it is not morally right to underestimate these problems, since they played with the lives of many innocent people.
It can be said that Turkish Airlines acted morally wrong, since the moral discourse should have outweighed the business discourse and more investigation was needed in order to have a safe flight.
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2 comments:
Like in other airplane crashes it turns out that also in this case the airplane company was not strict in their own rules. ‘Investigators’ were on their way is what is written.
The airplane company in this case was morally wrong but this is also the point for Boeing (who was informed with the problems).
I don’t think that money is the biggest reason in this case. Because everybody has enough morality to know that you can’t risk lives of others. Also spoiling utilitarisme of customers is not the point here.
In my opinion the bureaucratic monster caused the major failure of the airplane company and Boeing. These two parties were morally wrong.
The pilots could have brought it more clearer under attention but I don’t think this would have stopped the company of using the same plane. They just didn’t thought that they were risking lives.
I agree with the writer that Turkish Airlines acted morally wrong. However with the Boeing it is not clear that it acted morally wrong, in the sense that this airplane was made in 1951. It might get problem naturally because it is old plane. But Turkish Airlines did act morally wrong in any discourses.
First, in moral discourse it acted wrong because it is moral duty not to harm people. And in this case this airplane had high risk of getting defects. It had problem before and it was old. But the airplane company didn't do any action for it. Also in business discourse it is wrong because in long-term profit, though insurance company could have paid the financial damage, this crash seriously damaged its reputation. Fianlly if we think the legal discourse broad (including semi law), because this company didn't obey their rules so it acted wrong.
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