Southwest 1380: think about the flight attendants

http://blogs.harvard.edu/philg/2018/04/19/southwest-1380-think-about-the-flight-attendants/

by troydavis • 8 years ago

320 175 8 years ago

blogs.harvard.edu

jacquesm6• 8 years ago

The higher accident rate in general aviation is due to a lot of factors, but almost certainly not because flying a large jet is 'easier'.

The big differences are: discipline, training, maintenance, process and a safety-first attitude.

wtallis2• 8 years ago

but almost certainly not because flying a large jet is 'easier'.

That's not really what the author asserted. He said that flying a large jet with autopilot+two human pilots is easier than flying a small plane with just one human pilot. That probably is true, though I agree that it is hardly the only factor.

jacquesm6• 8 years ago

I can take off and fly in a single engine plane, never tried a landing though I've done a couple of 'mock' landings where you almost land but then go again. I wouldn't know where to begin to do any of that in a jet unless the other pilot did all the work and I was just along for the ride.

darkerside• 8 years ago

It would be easier in the same way that programming is easier than manual data entry. You guys are conflating two different meanings of easy, and, as usual, you're not right from your own points of view.

It's easier to learn to fly a small aircraft as a beginner. Once you're an expert, it's easier to use the automation and process tools at your disposal in an enterprise aircraft.

chrisper• 8 years ago

Also single engine vs multi engine.

jacquesm6• 8 years ago

Good point, yes, that makes a huge difference.

cm2187• 8 years ago

And in general more redundancy for all instruments.

dx034• 8 years ago

Likely the biggest factor. Engine failure in general aviation often ends deadly, in commercial aviation it hardly ever does.

chx2• 8 years ago

Oh, FFS. Yeah, we know, you can fly and land with a single engine, that's what ETOPS is more or less, noone questioned that. And yes, a two engine turboprop might have more problems with a single engine, but no idea how relevant that is.

But please. She had a situation at her hands where 140 people are injured, perhaps dying and she talks to the tower with a stony calm. Even the famous "Houston Center voice" of the Tower Controller was shaken a bit when he asked back. That's what made everyone astonished.

peterwwillis2• 8 years ago

That's just embellishment. 140 people were not injured or dying, she was told what the situation was. A Navy fighter pilot with over two decades of commercial flying is not going to get rattled by one engine out on a jetliner. It's not like the landing gear was broken.

PKop• 8 years ago

A Navy fighter pilot with over two decades of commercial flying is not going to get rattled by one engine out on a jetliner.

Spot on. Some seem to be going out of their way to embellish the stakes as if it's necessary to credit the pilot with being highly skilled. She already is, no question!

She doesn't need the exaggeration, it seems patronizing..the situation is what it is, no more no less.

ynniv• 8 years ago

This is horseshit. She had an engine explode and shrapnel ripped apart the fuselage, it’s not remotely a “one engine out simulation”. Was the wing damaged? How badly was the fuselage damaged? Was the plane actually on fire as the indicators showed? She was accounting for a large number of unknowns that the armchair crowd here is not even considering. She was also told that someone was ejected from the plane. Do these not have an impact on the pilot’s mental state? She retired from flying fighter jets only to be shot down by her own poorly maintained engine while carrying 150 other people? This is looking at a good outcome and deciding that it looked easy.

Yeah, the pilot matters.

maxerickson• 8 years ago

In the recording of the tower communications, she specifically mentions the person that was sitting next to the broken window, it doesn't sound at all like she believes that most of the passengers are (seriously) injured.

coatmatter13• 8 years ago

I think she might have also never entered the cabin, so therefore got the information secondhand. This probably helps with calmness and focus. "Crew Resource Management"?

huffmsa3• 8 years ago

The status of 140 people in the back has zero bearing on the situation in the cockpit.

The situation is that one engine has gone offline and there has been a sudden depressurization event. The airline industry realized long ago that people suck under pressure so they write checklists and explicit sets of procedures for dealing with basically everything.

Your job as the pilot is to execute that checklist, as best you can and not be a cowboy.

Even getting the plane ready for takeoff is a checklist you must complete and file before every takeoff.

coldcode• 8 years ago

Even the Miracle on the Hudson was a pilot completely aware of what could and should be done even though the exact scenario had never been practiced. Experienced pilots have been through enormous training sessions these days and even tossing them something no one has ever faced is still based on them understanding the limitations and potentials of a plane in distress. It doesn't always come out perfectly (planes do still crash based on pilot error) but I'd trust a well trained experience airline pilot without question in life or death in an airplane.

melling2• 8 years ago

On an unrelated note, I wish there was an easy way to recommend typo fixes on blogs. I’ll often find them on my blogs too. He’s got one:

“One any fire is extinguished, e.g., by cutting off the fuel or blowing the”

Sometimes I’ll write a blog and not find my mistake for months. Linus’ Law applied to writing on the Internet.

dorfsmay• 8 years ago

For some blog sites I agree, but here it is Philip Greenspun who shares his email, phone number and physical mailing address on his website! I've sent an email about the typo at that address.

I usually look for an email on the blog site, then on thier other/main sites, then a direct message option on twitter, then a contact in whois for that domain, then, as much as it drive me nuts that it could be corrected so easily, it's just a tipo after all, and I try to let it go.

melling2• 8 years ago

Hey, I was simply throwing out a suggestion that it would be nice to have a quick, quiet, and general way for everyone to deal with the problem.

If you like the current solution, and don’t see a problem, carry on.

swimfar• 8 years ago

I've thought about this before too, especially with forums. Here, for example, there are lots of non-native speakers who make little mistakes that I would like to correct. But some people see that as rude or as being overly picky. But when I'm learning a foreign language I want people to point out my mistakes.

I like the way that StackOverflow does it where you can request edits. That way it doesn't waste other people's time or interfere with the conversation.

apexalpha2• 8 years ago

But some people see that as rude or as being overly picky. But when I'm learning a foreign language I want people to point out my mistakes.

As a Dutchman and non-native speaker of English who learned most of it online I can tell you that I've always welcomed 'grammer nazis'. Especially before mobile phones made spellcheck a constant, online posts would engrave words in your brain with the wrong spelling.

I wished every board had a 'pull request' feature to privately let posters know about typos, like StackOverflow.

We still need to fix pronounciation though. When I was 14 I always thought Windows was telling me my copy was Genuine (Guh-nine) in stead of Genuine (Gen-you-in). But when do you ever hear that word on TV? Took me years before I stopped saying 'Guh-nine' in my head.

p.s. there is one in here for ya.

userbinator• 8 years ago

Thus the “engine failure then land single-engine” is something that a mid-career airline pilot would have done 500 times or more in a sim that is so realistic it can be logged as time in the actual aircraft.

For actual evidence of how common this is, look at avherald.com --- as I write this, there are over a dozen engine-problem incidents within the past week.

jballanc2• 8 years ago

Here's an amazing video of what happens in the cockpit during an engine failure in a commercial airliner: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEf35NtlBLg

pbhjpbhj3• 8 years ago

I really like these videos - basically, however, they have a chat, talk to ATC, put the seatbelt light on, read the checklist and turn off some things, monitor the engine. There's no noticeable flurry of activity, it's like watching an accountant talking to her secretary, just they have nicer views.

rory0962• 8 years ago

there are over a dozen engine-problem incidents within the past week.

Shrapnel flying into the fuselage causing depressurization and major wing damage, on the other hand...

The unique thing about this incident isn't that they blew a blade. It's that engine containment failed catastrophically.

ItsMe0000012• 8 years ago

That's no different for the pilot at that moment, you fly the airplane exactly the same. Loss of pressure is trained for too - a lot. What happened here is remarkable but that does not play a role for flying, more for what happens after landing (for example, the whole world covering the incident...).

I'm a measly PP-ASEL and while I applaud the captain all the "hero" and especially the "only a fighter jet pilot could do this" articles are ridiculous.

coatmatter13• 8 years ago

Superficially reminiscent of QF32, although that one didn't result in a cabin breach or any injuries - the wing did cop a fair bit though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qantas_Flight_32

tgb• 8 years ago

The most incredible part of this story is the fact that it is the first fatality in a US-registered passenger aircraft accident in over nine years and the first one in Southwest's 51 year history.

(Though looking into it, that overlooks two deaths in Southwest's history: one where a passenger attempted to enter the cockpit and was subdue by other passengers and later died and another where the plane overran the run way during landing and struck a car, killing a young boy in the car.)

sangnoir3• 8 years ago

Unfortunately Southwest suffered a similar uncontained engine failure in 2016 (Flight 3472)[1] - there was wing and fuselage damage, but the passenger compartment was not breached. The only difference is not of severity, but ill-/luck on where the shrapnel ended up.

1. https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/18/us/southwest-flight-engine-fa...

fokinsean• 8 years ago

Both instances used the CFM-56[0] engine, and I was reading on /r/aviation about how this engine has had prior problems. I don't know too much about aircraft engineering so I can't comment.

Also apparently there is a disturbing trend of outsourcing maintenance to other countries which makes it harder for the FAA to enforce regulations[1]. Southwest for example sends their planes to El Salvador.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CFM_International_CFM56

[1]https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/11/airplane-maintenance...

cylinder2• 8 years ago

We’ve chosen as a society to go all in on aviation safety due to the freakish and scary nature of aviation accidents.

Meanwhile the US lags the developed world in road safety. Driving in the US is like a mad max situation. Many unnecessary deaths are preventable. Road deaths are double the OECD average.

With high safety investment comes higher costs of flying which pushes more people into driving instead, which kills more people.

ceejayoz• 8 years ago

Are you arguing for reducing aviation safety, or a massive investment in road safety like places like Sweden have done? I honestly can't tell.

tnorthcutt• 8 years ago

I don't know why you're being downvoted, but I agree with you.

mattmaroon• 8 years ago

Probably because our odds of dying in a car crash are still something like 1/10,000. It's remote enough to not seem real.

danso• 8 years ago

You don’t think fear of flying contributes to people choosing to drive?

vondur• 8 years ago

"Mad Max", where the heck do you live in the US?

JackFr3• 8 years ago

Road deaths are double the OECD average.

I think you overstate that.

Consider fatalities per billion vehicle kilometers -- Americans drive more than the OECD average. The Czech Republic and Korea have rates triple those of the next closest OECD country, and the US fares better than Japan and Belgium.

Not only is it not Mad Max, it's basically within the norms of the OECD.

https://asset.keepeek-cache.com/medias/domain21/_pdf/media26...

JackFr3• 8 years ago

The difference is that one's own behavior behind the wheel is the primary driver of motor vehicle safety, while one's own behavior typically affects aircraft safety not one bit.

rsync• 8 years ago

"Driving in the US is like a mad max situation. Many unnecessary deaths are preventable. Road deaths are double the OECD average."

All of the recent discussion of road deaths and deaths per million miles, etc., usually have a clarifying post/comment which notes that these figures include motorcycles and commercial trucks ... which skew the numbers dramatically.

Does your own day to day (car) driving experience actually seem like a mad max scenario ?

Can you compare driving in the United States to, for instance, driving in Guatemala or El Salvador or Vietnam ?

I suspect not ...

dsfyu404ed5• 8 years ago

Maybe we're ok with our roads being statistically less safe per capita in exchange for a far greater amount of personal freedom of movement per capita?

ben77992• 8 years ago

Egotistical tone to this article... good explanation of procedures on an airliner but for background the author of the blog post made a boat load of money on Web 1.0 and fancies himself as a pilot. It's way too easy for a part-timer like him to pretend this was no big deal and he could have done it too.

He writes this article with a tone of jealousy or something that the captain is taking too much credit or didn't really have a hard job or something.

The captain of the SW plane didn't even want to be identified, the press took care of that. The fact that the rest of the crew wasn't identified doesn't mean the captain is taking too much credit or that everyone thinks the rest of the crew didn't do a great job too.

No reason for him to try and take the captain down in his post, a simpler blog post praising the rest of the crew would have been better.

If you were looking for it you could probably claim an element of sexism too since he's acting like the co-pilot isn't getting any credit because he's a man. That probably takes a reader who was predisposed to that viewpoint though.

contingencies• 8 years ago

I think you are over-interpreting.

zero_intp• 8 years ago

Rando from the internet thinks OP is right on target.

vvanders2• 8 years ago

I got a similar read from it, just because it was "routine" doesn't make it any less impressive. There were ~150 lives in the hands of that captian and keeping your cool in that situation should be commended (esp compared to situations like Air France where panic seemed to play a large factor).

ben77992• 8 years ago

Right. Doing it in the simulator and doing it in real life when the engine has exploded and the cabin has depressurized and you've got serious injuries and panic onboard are not the same thing.

Practicing in the simulator is routine, landing a plane that's had an explosion is not.

Nothing wrong with celebrating a job well done.

uhhhhhhh• 8 years ago

Completely agree with you.

The concept that saving ~150 people was "just a part of your job" and nothing special is insane. The fact the pilot did everything right IS commendable, it shows dedication to her job, the skill and knowledge required to do it, and the execution of all of that in an exemplary fashion that resulted in many lives saved.

As a society we spend days talking about presidential lawyers, talking heads and celebrities regardless of how much they deserve to be discussed or focused on. I can't think of a better example to offset the mindless drivel then to stop and appreciate someone for doing a job well done with the lives of so many entrusted to them.

coatmatter13• 8 years ago

Impressive to whom? Regardless, I think debating down this avenue is moot since to me the opinion piece was in response to the media hysteria, rather than the crew's specific actions.

blackbagboys• 8 years ago

Greenspun is notoriously, shall we say, “contrarian” when it comes to modern gender issues, so I don’t think that’s an incorrect gloss on the piece.

gbacon6• 8 years ago

It’s way too easy for a part-timer like him to pretend this was no big deal and he could have done it too.

The author’s FAA credentials include[0] Airline Transport Pilot (ATP) Airplane Single-Engine Land (ASEL), ATP Airplane Multi-Engine Land (AMEL), ATP Helicopter, Certificated Flight Instructor (CFI), Multi-Engine Instructor (MEI), CFI-Instrument (CFII), CFI-Helicopter, and CFII-H. He flew as First Officer for a regional airline.

This is not Joe Random PPL.

[0] https://philip.greenspun.com/flying/resume

toss1• 8 years ago

Spot-on.

also omitted from Greenspun's article was the fact that the plane first listed more than 40 degrees and had to be recovered from that attitude.

But this completely contradicted his narrative that the autopilot just takes care of that sort of "mis-rigging".

Yes, the pilots practice for it, yes they are experienced, and yes they have help on a large plane. But a successful outcome is not a foregone conclusion, and a hundred things could go wrong that would end it in disaster. Acting like it is no big deal is a really bad take, and the pilot and crew deserve every accolade for getting it right.

SomeHacker44• 8 years ago

As a commercial jet pilot (not airlines, small jets by Cessna), my reaction to much of the coverage in, say, the NYT, was much the same. This was an "ordinary" event from a training perspective, and has a straightforward set of responses - fly the plane, memory items, checklist items (the QRH mentioned), etc. Indeed, as they mention, in a crew environment things are even more calm and responsibilities are (or should be) well defined.

I've had an engine failure in cruise flight (on a multi-engine piston plane) in a single-pilot situation. (I later wrote about it in a magazine article.) We train for that too - although not as frequently as airline pilots do who train at least every six months. It was also a non-event from a "what to do". In fact, the only time my single passenger mentioned she was made nervous (after we landed) was when ATC asked for the number of souls on board (which they knew from my IFR flight plan but they always ask). "When did I become a soul???"

One thing my best instructor always told me about an emergency: "First, wind your watch." In other words, don't panic and do things hastily and make things worse. Especially in cruise.

So, kudos to the flight deck crew for doing exactly what they had trained to do and successfully putting the plane on the ground after dealing with the emergency!

Kudos to the rest of the flight crew for what must have been total chaos and fear among the passengers and for doing what I'm sure was their absolute best to save the unfortunate victim.

And, in the end, let's all remember that this (seemingly) slightly uncontained engine failure could have been much, much worse and be glad of that. Let's also be thankful that the training airline pilots receive generally have situations that are much less benign than an engine failure in cruise and have it drilled in to them how to handle it.

DrJokepu• 8 years ago

Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t asking for the number of souls is basically asking how many people are (still) alive, as opposed to asking about the number of persons, which would also include deceased people? If someone died during the incident, given that the pilot is not a doctor with the medical authority to decide who’s alive and who isn’t, would that person still be reported as a soul?

chmod775• 8 years ago

I'd wager yes. Because when the rescue team goes in they'll count bodies, living or dead. Doesn't matter if the person died before the plane landed, in a fire that erupted after it landed or made it out alive.

You want all of that to add up to some total.

MontagFTB• 8 years ago

I doubt the pilots’ priorities during the incident is giving a casualty report. I don’t think it helps ATC land the plane any better, either. The number of people on the craft help determine the state the plane is in (weight, crewmanship/passenger ratio, etc.)

rwc• 8 years ago

Souls on board is a way of asking number of living humans on board — so there’s no confusion when asked how many are alive on the flight whether we should be including dogs, cats, parakeets or the dead guy in a cargo casket being transported.

ramses0• 8 years ago

IMHO, "How many passengers? => 150" is very different from "How many souls? => 156" ... passengers necessarily may be interpreted as "people who paid for seats" and not include the 2 pilots and 4 flight attendants [as an example].

"A plane went down with 150 passengers, all 156 souls aboard were lost."

I guess "soul" is the universal term for "living human", regardless of their job, role, lot in life, etc.

FireBeyond3• 8 years ago

If someone died during the incident, given that the pilot is not a doctor with the medical authority to decide who’s alive and who isn’t

In many states (not sure how it applies to a plane in air), doctors are certainly not the only people to determine or legally declare death.

In my state EMTs and Paramedics can call death legally in many (relatively obvious) circumstances:

- rigor mortis

- livor mortis

- decapitation

- incineration

- decomposition

- body position incompatible with life

- evisceration of brain or heart

In those settings, while most would also include the attendance of a medical examiner or coroner, a physician does not have to "pronounce death".

Similarly, in resuscitation scenarios, we can discuss with a physician ECG rhythm/s found, length of resuscitation, circumstance, interventions attempted, and the physician can delegate to us the ability to discontinue resuscitation and call the time of death at that point.

gbacon6• 8 years ago

The phrase “souls on board” derives from nautical usage. In radio comms, being brief and direct are critical. ATC requests how many living people (or not known to be dead people) are aboard in order to relay the number to search-and-rescue.

Being monosyllabic, its use in “aviationese” is a matter of economy of expression and not a political statement or invitation for handwringing. It also sidesteps potential fussy categorization along the lines of, “We have two crew and one passenger.”

In comparison with the above nine syllables, the relevant information requires two: “Tree souls.”

mncharity2• 8 years ago

much of the coverage

"HERO PILOT saves the day by <professionally executing standard emergency procedures>" does seem to have become a news media trope.

"Military, and then decades of experience" has been mentioned for decades. But my fuzzy impression is it would be emphasized as it related to specific challenges of the event. That threshold seemed to drop over the years. The bizarre "hero" bit seems more recent, and perhaps increasingly common.

Spice for ambulance chasing. At least it raises the societal visibility of female military aviators. And of older women as professionally excellent.

I wonder if one might usefully engineer the addition of tropes to news media playbooks. Like "in an example of industry/profession/class groupthink/filterbubble, X said Y". Or "trade agreement section X came from industry Y because Z" - the TPP now vs TPP under US leadership diff would seemingly make for accessible storytelling, but there's been little.

the NYT, was much the same.

My lifetime paper, but... the NYT is ok with ambulance chasing. And regrettably ok with sloppy emphasis.

Faced with 9/11, setting the tone for the nation, given a menu of options like "stiff upper lip", "carry on", "spirit of Mumbai", and "back to work", we got... something else. Pulitzer-prize-winning ambulance-chasing death fetish? I've wondered, at the time and since, how might the nation have responded, if offered something very vaguely like <diverse 1/3-immigrant new yorkers>: "We are New York - f'em - we can build 'em up faster than the f'ers can knock 'em down"? Oh well - an alternate timeline.

I wonder if one could get a "carry on" trope going. Instead of "this passenger is taking it in stride - drat - turn off the camera and seek dramatic emotions elsewhere", perhaps a "person demonstrating a stiff upper lip" could become one additional troped story component. Once one exists, it would be easier for it's relative emphasis to increase with time.

maxxxxx• 8 years ago

I don't like the hero worship either. first time I noticed it was with the firemen during 9/11. Now it seems the media always wants to have a hero for each event. I don't want to diminish the pilots but as far as I know an engine loss is normal procedure and well understood. There are probably dozens of events every day where a truck driver is faced with an exploding tire or other problems that are as difficult or more difficult to handle.

L_Rahman2• 8 years ago

Low effort comment - but I appreciate this breakdown of the story metagame that surrounds any event that receive coverage and that a big function of changing society is changing the structure and tropes of stories we tell.

As one of those immigrant New Yorkers, I too wonder what would have happened if we'd gone down that road.

ianmcgowan• 8 years ago

The "first, wind your watch" reminds me of this (possibly) apocryphal story from Debugging by Dave Agans. I think about this when everything is crashing around me, and have a small thrill of recognition.

http://kk.org/cooltools/debugging-1/ has an excerpt:

Change One Thing at a Time On nuclear-powered subs, there's a brass bar in front of the control panel for the power plant. When status alarms begin to go off, the engineers are trained to grab the brass bar with both hands and hold on until they've looked at all the dials and indicators, and understand exactly what's going on in the system. What this does is help them overcome the temptation to start "fixing" things, throwing switches and opening valves. These quick fixes confuse the automatic recovery systems, bury the original fault beneath an onslaught of new conditions, and may cause a real, major disasters. It's more effective to remember to do something ("Grab the bar!") tha

jlgaddis3• 8 years ago

It's more effective to remember to do something ("Grab the bar!") tha

... than to remember not to do something ("Don't touch that dial!") So, grab the bar!

thvu1k• 8 years ago

I think it's heroic nonetheless

peacetreefrog• 8 years ago

Who is going to read the book he recommends at the end -- 9 Minutes, 20 Seconds? A well-written in depth look at a 29 person plane crash and the people involved? Sounds terrifying.

garduque• 8 years ago

I just ordered it. I fly a ton (as a passenger) and am for some reason fascinated by plane crash stories.

AceyMan• 8 years ago

I've known about that book but not read it.

I have read the full, final NTSB report on the accident.

I was the on-duty Flight Control Manager at the time of the incident and received the initial contact (via landline) from FAA. (Due to the specifics of the failure mode the crew did not radio their dispatcher.)

Incredibly, within minutes, the accident was already on local broadcast as breaking news while we were still putting together the Go Team.

In my current position (DevOps) people have commented how cool I am when important stuff goes off the rails — I usually just say "compared to my previous career, this is nothing."

joering2• 8 years ago

In case someone asks "childish question" why airplanes do not have parachutes, of course they could have those, but the cost of design and implementation on such large scale of tens of thousands of planes, outweighs any outcry caused by few crashes that occur per year. Hence no law that would force airlines/airplanes to implement those and airlines/airplanes are last when it comes to lavishly spending money out of their free will, even if it means saving one extra life.

coatmatter13• 8 years ago

the cost of design and implementation on such large scale of tens of thousands of planes, outweighs any outcry caused by few crashes that occur per year

Or it would remove money from where it could be better spent. There are some light aircraft (such as some experimental ultralights) that do have parachutes. Frankly, I'd prefer to fly in an airliner or other planes that don't have such warning bells and red flags all over.

Here's an example: What would the effect be if all passengers who board a plane or cruiseliner were required to wear life jackets before take off just in case of the remote chance of needing to face a disaster over water?

And a possibly more controversial example: Helmets and bullet vests can save some lives. At what point should the focus be on legislating on their mandatory use, versus fixing the problems at the source?

I'd class parachutes, helmets and bullet vets as PPE in the chart over here - resources and attention is always finite even before we get into the topic of freedom: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchy_of_hazard_controls

stordoff• 8 years ago

I'd also wonder if it's a net positive - being forced to stay on the plane and hope that it ends well vs. potentially jumping early when it turns out to not be necessary. Untrained, panicked people jumping out of a moving plane sounds like a recipe for disaster.

justin66• 8 years ago

The most extraordinary effort performed that day was, judging from early reports, done by two passengers who pulled a dying woman's broken body back into an aircraft undergoing depressurization. That and figuring out how to cover the hole in the fuselage strike me as more "heroic" (a loaded term, maybe) than piloting the jet while it was down an engine, or even calming the passengers and helping them don their oxygen masks.

lowbloodsugar• 8 years ago

Indeed. The guy who, in a holed aircraft with someone actively being sucked out, undid his seatbelt and tried to help.

JustSomeNobody• 8 years ago

If a pilot lands a broken plane safely, she may just be doing her job, but to a passenger on board, they may feel she saved their life. That feeling is justifiable and should in no way be minimized by having a "well, technically" attitude.

As for the media, well, they're going to get caught up in the emotional side of it. That's just a given.

coatmatter13• 8 years ago

"There are some items to do from memory, with the two pilots cooperating so that they can agree on which engine is the dead one and should have its thrust/fuel lever cut off, for example.

Airline training stresses the use of the autopilot in an emergency, which frees the human pilots to concentrate on the checklists and not pulling back, for example, the thrust lever on the running engine."

This comes to mind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TransAsia_Airways_Flight_235#I... (https://avherald.com/h?article=48145bb3)

jrockway2• 8 years ago

I don't really have a problem commending the captain for safely landing her aircraft. Yes, she was trained for it. But plenty of people have performance anxiety even when the stakes are low -- how many people perform perfectly when losing your cool can lead to you killing yourself and hundreds of others?

And, it's not like airline captains always follow their training. Look at Colgan Air Flight 3407. The aircraft aerodynamically stalled. To recover, the captain pulled the control column backwards, the exact opposite of what training called for, while the first officer silently reduced the lift of the wing by reducing the flaps setting, the exact opposite of what their training called for. They killed 49 people on board and one in the house they crashed into.

So yes, it's easy to say "that was nothing, they're trained for that", and while true, sometimes the training is not executed as precisely as necessary. Not messing it up is commendable.

gbacon6• 8 years ago

That incident is a good case study into the concept of the accident chain. Both pilots were tired. The first officer complained of feeling ill. The captain had a history of failing four checkrides and three airline check events. Crew coordination was poor. The captain evidently had a complete loss of situation awareness.

Richard Collins (not the pop singer) in Air Facts Journal called it a system error[0].

[0] https://airfactsjournal.com/2014/03/double-tragedy-colgan-ai...

jrockway2• 8 years ago

Absolutely. But you can apply all that to the Southwest incident; the captain didn't fail her checkrides, she didn't come to work tired or ill, she managed her crew resources effectively, etc., etc.

On some level, I agree that nobody is a hero for just doing their job. But when not doing your job leads to people dying, it sure is nice when you do it efficiently while under pressure.

chx2• 8 years ago

Check https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-veteran-fighter-pilot-tamm... instead of this garbage.

Southwest 1380: think about the flight attendants

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