The biggest takeaway is the “P.I.O.S.E.E” decision making model mentioned about 37 minutes in, as what the pilots could have done:
- Problem
- Information
- Options
- Select
- Execute
- Evaluate
Aviation incidents usually have pretty good learning points, as a lot of high-stakes decisions have to made under high stress, and hence a lot of useful frameworks and concepts come from the industry. (Maybe also partially my bias from serving in RSAF!) In this case, the pilots failed to appreciate early enough that the tailstrike might have caused structural issues and accepted instructions to climb higher and higher. Thankfully their company maintenance advised them to abort the flight instead of flying for hours across the US back to Florida!
Now, it’s obvious that the pilots misidentified the pressing problem at hand. Could they have done better? Probably, but it is also understandable why - they were both traumatised by the entire incident and pretty shaken up. That said, they did try to get more information, and did talk to the cabin crew, and eventually also company maintenance who selected the right option for them to immediately divert.
But there’s more: the pilots managed to reflect on what they could have done better and identified the expectation bias which caused them to have the near-miss in the first place. The final report also mentioned correctly that the other pilot could have used standard radio phraseology as well.
The hard part of course, is remembering this framework when actually faced with a crisis.