In the years before Cockpit Voice Recorders, Transponders, and clear/mandatory repair orders, crash investigators had to reconstruct what or who failed by creating profiles for the cockpit crew or a suspect culture at the airline. "Business as usual" practices at regulatory bodies were examined with occasionally shocking discoveries. More than once, "pilot error" was used to conceal design, training deficiencies, or outright fraud.

Many of those problems still exist. Sometimes the FAA and the airline get together to blame the crew, if at all possible, because it reduces their insurance liability. The airlines also do trade-off analyses that tell them that a few deaths now and then are more profitable than a perfect record, because being perfect is really expensive. Sometimes it's easier/cheaper to pay out an insurance claim than to prevent the problem in the first place.