Well, to play devils advocate, there's nothing wrong with young or inexperienced members on your team. They often see things that those that have been in the business for a long time don’t or they bring new techniques and technologies that older hands haven’t kept up with as well.
BUT;
You don’t comprise your entire team of them. You have a mix of old hands, journeyman and apprentices. That way you get innovative and fresh thinking tempered by competent people and on the other end of the spectrum, people with lots of experience who “push back” on new odeas and force everyone to rethink what they’re doing and where they are going.
You expect young guns to go high and right or eff up now and then. It’s such a certainty that it will happen, you plan for it. Your experienced members temper that and often find a way for their new ideas to work while still staying inside a safety framework. Your safety framework is the “trap” to catch the ideas that are just too far out to take a chance on. Its also how you keep your “old hands“ in line and on task.
Safety is pri one. Full stop. Everything takes a back seat to it, including “innovation”.
A successful team is about balance and an effective leader knows how to achieve it. An effective leader also knows to set up those safety “traps” in multiple places and at critical junctures. It’s James Reason’s “Swiss Cheese” model and as a pilot and aerospace engineer, that yahoo should have known it inside and out. Maybe he did and chose to disregard it. Foolish move if he did.
Seems like the weak link here was leadership…..