Phil Greenspun debunks Malcolm Gladwell on airline safety

http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/foreign-airline-safety

by collision • 17 years ago

152 41 17 years ago

philip.greenspun.com

pc• 17 years ago

Though the overall point may be correct, it weakens philg's argument to claim that a non-US pilot may become "Captain at Major Airline" after just 20 hours of pilot-in-command time: that's just not true for any jurisdiction I'm aware of (the article claims it's "typical"), and I'd love to know of even one such case. (I'm an occasional pilot, with both US and "foreign" licenses.)

mechanical_fish• 17 years ago

Yes, even knowing nothing about the subject at hand this argument looked a wee bit exaggerated. If the situation were truly so astonishingly extreme, wouldn't the USA become a major net exporter of airline-pilot talent?

Come to think of it, is the USA a major net exporter of airline-pilot talent? And if not, why not? Is the fix in, as it is with doctors and lawyers? (Getting a medical degree is one thing, moving to the USA is another, but getting licensed to practice medicine in the USA without a US medical degree is, alas, a third.) Or is the language and cultural barrier too high? (I was under the impression that international airline pilots all spoke at least enough English to communicate with air traffic control, which is to say: pretty decent English. You'd think that you could have a pretty decent life as an expatriate American airline pilot.) Or would it just cost more than folks are willing to pay?

jrockway2• 17 years ago

Come to think of it, is the USA a major net exporter of airline-pilot talent?

Dunno, but I have a hunch the answer is yes. (Not "net", but we probably do export.)

I was very surprised when I was flying from Hong Kong to Shanghai on Dragonair a few months ago; both the captain and first officer were white guys with American accents. Not what I expected from an airline that only flies from mainland China to Hong Kong. (I also flew on Cathay Pacific on that trip, and the flight crew had British accents. They were not Chinese, which is what surprised me.)

So I assume there are some pilots that choose to work for a foreign carrier rather than a US carrier. It makes sense, because English is an important skill, and the pay must be about the same. If my work life would become less stressful by moving to Hong Kong, I would gladly do it. I don't see why pilots would be any different.

arch_hunter• 17 years ago

I believe that America exports at least some pilots.

I live in China, and a couple years ago there were rumors going around among the foreigners in the city I live in that a Chinese airline (I think it was China Southern) was considering moving all of its foreign pilots from Shanghai to this city in order to cut costs.

I have also run into American pilots flying a Thai Airways plane (we were one of the last groups off of the plane, and then we stopped to rearrange who carried what luggage, and crew caught up with us in the hallway).

JimmyL3• 17 years ago

Come to think of it, is the USA a major net exporter of airline-pilot talent?

Coming only from personal observations, it sure seems like it's an exporter (I'm not sure about how major), but only to certain types of countries - specifically, prosperous non-European ones. Places where those pilots can live decent expatriate lifestyles: think China, Taiwan, Malaysia, UAE, Kuwait, etc. My experience is less varied on developing-world airlines, but I can't recall running into any Western pilots working for Kenya Airways or Royal Air Maroc (the two I have flown most recently).

This makes sense, in some way - no matter what, Kenya Airways is unlikely to attract someone who spent a bunch of their time in Orlando to move to Nairobi, but with the right amount of money I could see those people moving to Shanghai for a few years to get some seniority and time in control of a larger plane than they would have if they had stayed with Continental.

Interestingly, I "see" (hear) very few non-national Captains flying on Western European airlines. My theory is that all those countries have Air Forces of their own, and that their aviation sectors are small enough that they can rely on ex-military pilots for the majority of their piloting needs.

rubyrescue• 17 years ago

agreed. There is no way anyone is Captain at a major airline anywhere in the world after 270 hours... I'm a licensed private pilot in the US. I know commercial pilots from the states that fly for Major "foreign" airlines and i know the requirements were much greater.

pgreenspun4• 17 years ago

My article did not assert that a pilot became captain at a foreign carrier after 270 hours. The article asserted that a person became captain at a foreign carrier after thousands of hours... nearly all as second in command. That is a very different background than someone who becomes captain at a major U.S. airline (who would have to have been pilot in command at a regional airline for 1000+ hours or pilot in command of a USAF airplane).

pgreenspun4• 17 years ago

It depends on what you mean by PIC time. The pilot going through a professional flight training program will log all of the time after he gets his or her Private as PIC time, e.g., during instrument rating training. However, logging de jure PIC time while an instructor is in the aircraft is not the same as being the de facto PIC.

In a country that doesn't have a regional airline system, there is really no other way than to create captains out of people who have spent nearly all of their flying hours as first officer (second in command).

viraptor• 17 years ago

It's a bit hard to believe that training programs can be split into US and foreign. There are many countries in the second category and it's very probable that most of them have their own requirements. I'm not an expert, I may be wrong. But every sentence comparing country X to "the rest of the world" activates my BS detector.

And this "Unless the country is very large, there won't be any regional airlines." seems silly. I haven't heard of any European country with no regional airline. Even Iceland has their own with only 2 "real cities".

There's a lot of hand-waving in the post. I'd really like to stick some [citation needed] in there.

tumult• 17 years ago

You don't need to exaggerate the article by calling it a 'debunking,' it posits another theory and lays out some facts. It's very even-handed and a good read.

pgbovine• 17 years ago

well he is definitely trying to debunk gladwell, as indicated by him bashing gladwell's lack of airline pilot and scientific credentials at the end of the article. it certainly isn't an unbiased alternative theory by an impartial third-party.

Elepsis• 17 years ago

I just read Outliers yesterday, conveniently enough, so the chapter is fresh on my mind. While Greenspun certainly refutes a thesis quite effectively, I don't think it's actually the thesis of the chapter he's discussing.

First of all, Gladwell does not at any point claim that American or Canadian pilots are "the best" due to the power distance index--in fact, he doesn't claim that at all. If you look at the book, the U.S. has the fifth-lowest index (lower being "better" for these purposes), behind New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and Ireland, and he never says anything in the chapter that even implies that American pilots are best.

Nor does he say anywhere that the power distance index is the primary cause of plane crashes. Indeed, he explicitly says that any accident is caused by 6-7 small mistakes building on one another without being caught--something that could quite possibly be caused by inexperience, as Greenspun notes--but which can be exacerbated by two people in the cockpit unable to communicate in a direct way.

So while I think the article is a useful and interesting theory about differences in rates of crashes (though it should be noted that U.S. airlines do not have an overwhelmingly better safety record than, say, major European ones [1]), it is ultimately another in a series of "hey, let me overgeneralize what Malcolm Gladwell is saying and back it up with minor factual gaffes I found in the book" articles.

[1] http://www.planecrashinfo.com/rates.htm

barnaby• 17 years ago

I read it several months ago and had the same reaction to this article. Thank you for confirming.

I don't recall that chapter being about ethnocentrism or even about how to fly planes, but rather about power dynamics, and reverence versus the "entitlement" that he talks about elsewhere in the book.

jseliger2• 17 years ago

I was just going to post something to this effect: Greenspun is busily refuting a claim that Gladwell never makes, which is that American pilots are somehow better, or that they're better because they have more experience. In fact, IIRC, Gladwell takes pains to point out that some of the South Korea crashes had very senior pilots flying.

Gladwell's larger point is that a) modern crashes are composed of a large number of crashes on planes and that b) cultural inhibition of direct communication can contribute to crashes to the extent that a more junior position feels unable to speak directly to the pilot.

I have my reservations about Gladwell, as described here: http://jseliger.com/2009/07/28/outliers-and-blink , but the pilot chapter isn't among his weaker so far as I can tell.

jseliger2• 17 years ago

I have my reservations about Gladwell, as described here: http://jseliger.com/2009/07/28/outliers-and-blink , but the pilot chapter isn't among his weaker so far as I can tell.

pgreenspun4• 17 years ago

Gladwell does not explicitly say that American pilots are the best. However, he does use the U.S. major airline safety record as the standard (to which the cited foreign carriers fail to rise). U.S. major airlines conduct most of their operations with U.S. and Canadian pilots at U.S. and Canadian airports.

The error chain leading up to an accident is an old concept. The key to preventing accidents is to break the chain, which is typically best done by a pilot who has a lot of extra situational awareness. Sadly, situational awareness mostly comes with experience, so educating a 150-hour pilot about the error chain is not going to enable him or her to deal with a challenging situation as well as a 5000-hour pilot.

tokenadult2• 17 years ago

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

"You can make up a new title if you want, but if you put gratuitous editorial spin on it, the editors may rewrite it."

defen2• 17 years ago

Not having read Outliers, I can't really comment on the argument presented here. However, I found it rather... odd?... that he chose Martha's Vinyard as his example destination for a private pilot, who would need to "check the weather, ..., and decide whether the risks are a reasonable match for his or her skills and equipment", considering that there was a very famous plane crash under similar circumstances, of which I'm sure Greenspun is aware. It struck me in an odd way - I guess it just seems a bit callous to throw in such a veiled reference in an article about airliner crashes.

JimmyL3• 17 years ago

I saw that, and was 50-50 if he was referencing JFK Jr. explicitly.

On one hand, Greenspun is a pretty noted Libertarian and not a fan of the Kennedys. On the other, he often references flying to Martha's Vineyard for day trips in his other writings about aviation, and it seems like a pretty sensible place to fly to if you're into civil aviation and looking for a day flight somewhere from Boston (where I believe he's based).

gwern• 17 years ago

I'd agree; from reading his blog for a long time, he is in fact based out of Boston, spends a lot of time engaged in small-scale civil aviation, and does visit Martha's Vineyard more frequently than your average bear. (Check out http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2009/08/15/complete-marth... ).

Nothing says it can't be both - it's a location that naturally comes to his mind, his point is valid (weather conditions can be dangerous there, Kennedys aside), and it happens to be a dig at some people he hates.

Packing that much into a short phrase is called good polemic writing, people.

aaronsw• 17 years ago

I'm friends with Philip and I doubt he'd consider himself a libertarian. He's more of a _Slate_-style counterintuitivist, although he'd probably object to any kind of political label.

pgreenspun4• 17 years ago

One of my readers pointed me to this discussion. The Martha's Vineyard reference was just a typical destination for folks at our flight school. There is no point in renting an airplane to go to Providence; it is quicker to drive! There is no point in renting an airplane to go to New York City; the car service from Teterboro costs more than the Amtrak ticket from Boston. Block Island, Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard, Montauk, on the other hand, are destinations that are actually much easier to reach by private airplane than by car or train. KMVY has a good on-airport restaurant. KMVY has an ILS and GPS/LPV approaches, plus an approach lighting system on Runway 24, which makes it a relatively easy place to land in actual instrument conditions. And the island is home to three of my favorite girls (one of whom has four legs).

KMVY averages 141 operations per day, so the JFK, Jr. crash in 1999 has been followed by approximately 500,000 less eventful takeoffs and landings.

-- Philip

defen2• 17 years ago

My apologies then - I didn't know that KMVY was so busy, and that it is a popular destination for people at your school.

credo• 17 years ago

The misrepresentations in the first paragraph show that the writer's primary objective was to bash Gladwell and he doesn't seem to care much about the facts.

To say "Gladwell comes to the conclusion that foreigners are unsafe because they are ... foreign." and "If only everyone were American or Canadian, the world would be a better and safer place." is absurd.

It is true that Gladwell talked about low power-distance-index (PIDI) cultures and how pilots from low-PDI cultures were likely to act differently from pilots from high-PDI cultures. However, he didn't say that American pilots were superior to "foreigners". On the contrary, Gladwell mentions a study showing that countries like Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa etc. had a lower PDI than the US. He also mentioned a study showing that Jamaica, Singapore, Sweden, Denmark etc. cultures were better able to tolerate/manage ambiguity than America.

As for Canada, I don't think Gladwell even mentions Canada in that chapter.

It is funny that the guy should have written a whole post to attack Gladwell and started the post with a blatant misrepresentation of what Gladwell wrote

IgorPartola• 17 years ago

While I find Gladwell's writing stimulating, the man quotes Wkipedia as his source multiple times. How a New Yorker writer could get away with it, I don't know.

I think Outliers boils down to "if you have the lucky background at the right time and the right place, you will be given more and bigger opportunities." The rest is simply interesting anectdotes.

nice1• 17 years ago

This comes up again and again: the man (Gladwell) is a bullshit artist.

po2• 17 years ago

It is interesting that in the past, Gladwell has talked about how it takes 10,000 hours of real effort for someone to get effortlessly good at something. Here Greenspun is talking the same point.

self• 17 years ago

The 10,000 hours thing is actually early on in the same book.

po2• 17 years ago

Ah, I heard him talking about it in a radiolab episode.

larsberg• 17 years ago

Gladwell's books are not scholarly research. They're more like hipster coffee shop conversations, and should be taken with a healthy dose of rigorous skepticism, even though they are usually quite enjoyable.

tokenadult2• 17 years ago

I think Gladwell would largely agree with this description of his writings, or at least with the part that says that his writings should be approached skeptically and that they don't purport to be scholarly. From the article "Malcolm Gladwell's Method" in the Wall Street Journal on November 15, 2008,

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122671211614230261.html?mod=...

an interview by Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg:

"[Q:] Do you worry that you extrapolate too much from too little?

"[A:] No. It's better to err on the side of over-extrapolation. These books are playful in the sense that they regard ideas as things to experiment with. I'm happy if somebody reads my books and reaches a conclusion that is different from mine, as long as the ideas in the book cause them to think. You have to be willing to put pressure on theories, to push the envelope. That's the fun part, the exciting part. If you are writing an intellectual adventure story, why play it safe? I'm not out to convert people. I want to inspire and provoke them."

Psyonic• 17 years ago

Hmmm... while that may be, many people are taking his books as nonfiction. Perhaps he should consider that, and be more careful, lest he spread potentially damaging information to the masses

camccann2• 17 years ago

So basically, sometimes he says things that are flat-out wrong, and he doesn't care as long as they're thought-provoking falsehoods, and people read it anyway because it's fun and engaging and thought-provoking in a way completely unrelated to accuracy.

In other words, he's basically an entertainer. Debunking Gladwell is like "debunking" the historical accuracy of Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

philelly• 17 years ago

yet, his personal blog is largely attacks on people who publish essays questioning his conclusions. for instance, he appears to be still steaming over the whole pinker review/ eigenvalue debacle. i guess i can't really argue with the quotation you provide but he seems to me like someone who takes his conclusions (too) seriously.

JimmyL3• 17 years ago

For this point:

A typical 16-hour day...nowhere for the pilot to rest. He or she will be sitting near a gate, in uniform...trying to shut out the noise of thousands of passengers walking by and hundreds of public address announcements.

It seems like a quick-and-easy solution would be to have the Pilots' union demand access to the airline's network lounges (or better yet, make it an FAA requirement so that they can get into off-brand lounges at smaller airports) in their next collective agreement. Union members would commit to not taking advantage of the free food or the computer terminals, and the airlines would in exchange let them hang out there as it's quieter and gives them somewhere to get a bit restful before their next leg.

And if the airlines don't want to fill up their own lounges with free staff (as opposed to passengers), contract out the problem - give the pilots PriorityPass memberships, so they'd be going into lounges that aren't their own, and that are explicitly OK with people paying to get in.

nraynaud2• 17 years ago

Am I crazy to think that cutting the world in "US" and "the rest" is profoundly dumb?

I mean, putting in the same bag Benin, China and Germany? did anybody loose his mind?

jrockway2• 17 years ago

Did you read his argument, or are you just upset that your favorite country was lumped in with your least-favorite country? I think, for the very limited category described in the article, that this is not outrageous.

nraynaud2• 17 years ago

I read the article, and I see that number for "the rest of the world" are in one column.

Phil Greenspun debunks Malcolm Gladwell on airline safety

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