Maggie's Farm

We'll dismantle both the article and Cap'n Gladbag event by event.  First, Korean Air's two crashes, then the Colombian crash outside of Long Island, then a quick chat with the Russkies, then on to San Fran.

There are two Korean Air crashes in play, one in England and one in Guam.  As you'll see, while the following England crash can be 100% attributed to cultural conditioning, that's as far as Gladdy's theory goes on this entire page.

As a hat tip to tradition, I started the clip a wee bit early, just to point out that — once again — an airline disaster is almost always a series of events, not just one catastrophic boo-boo.  In this case, if the mechanic had simply had the damn manual on hand, none of this would have happened.

The point is, the fact that they're all zeroing in on one, specific culture is exceptionally myopic and disregards that this is basic human nature we're dealing with, and while the willingness to be cowed into silence, even in the face of death, might predominantly be a military trait, that certainly doesn't mean that a naturally loud, bossy assbite can't cow a young, meekish co-pilot into silence, even with death tapping on the window.

And remember, as in this case, people in these dire situations are often flying in blind conditions, so there's no obvious horizon that junior can point to to make his case that the plane is starting to tip ass over teakettle.  At that moment, in that small, confined room, most of it becomes nothing but strength of personality, vocal timber, and our old friends cultural conditioning and human nature.

And the conclusion they draw — that something this deep can be trained out of a rookie — is essentially flawed because, while it may work overall, there will always be that one time when a young navigator will be so afraid of being chewed out (again!) by the snarling captain that he won't mention that his hydraulic readings for the vertical stabilizer are on the low side.

Result?  48 minutes later the plane is a smoldering ruin in a Japanese hillside.  The small rupture of the hydraulic line only grew worse, the redundant backup system didn't work, and by the time the alarm bells sounded, it was too late.  If he had informed his captain initially, he would have been instructed to perform additional diagnostic tests and they would have discovered that they had a serious problem on their hands and headed for the nearest airport.

On the subject, it should be noted that there are a number of China Airlines and Japan Airlines crashes in the 'Mayday' series that, while an undue deference to a superior officer didn't directly lead to the crash, it certainly seemed to play a minor role, even if the documentary didn't call attention to it.  See above hydraulic scenario.  Again, labeling this a specific Korean problem is way off the mark.

The article continues its stalwart defense of Big G's theorem:

To Gladwell, this may have explained why Korean Air Flight 801 crashed into a hill while on approach to an airport in Guam in 1997, killing 223 people.

In addition to a series of misfortunes, including bad weather, an offline warning system, and outdated charts, the co-pilot was afraid to question the poor judgment of the pilot, wrote Gladwell — a fatal mistake.

What the poor bastards flying the plane didn't know was that, unlike almost every other airport in the Central Galaxy, Guam's radio beacon that tells pilots where the end of the runway is was ten miles in front of the goddamn runway.  This is in a blinding rainstorm at night, just to note.  Plus, the FAA had almost inexplicably re-calibrated a system that warned the control tower when a plane was too low so now it wasn't working for nearby planes, and between the two of them, the ILS being out and zero visibility, the pilots barely had a chance.

Similarly, Gladwell assigned blame for the 1990 crash of Avianca Flight 52 in Long Island, New York, to human error caused by cultural differences. The plane ran out of fuel while circling JFK, leading to 73 fatalities. The pilots of the Colombian airline did not assert themselves enough with air traffic control when communicating that they were running out of fuel, wrote Gladwell.

That is, if you call hollering at the controllers that you're running out of fuel and two of your four engines have already flamed out "not asserting yourself".

Although controller after controller passed them along without mentioning that, ya know, THEY WERE LOW ON FUEL, they escaped without blame and it was all heaped on the Arianca pilots for using the word "priority" instead of "emergency".  This, discounting the fact that it wasn't an actual "emergency" when they reminded the controller that they were getting seriously low on fuel.  You'd think little buzz words like, oh, "WE ONLY HAVE FIVE MINUTES OF FUEL LEFT!" would be a tip-off to these seasoned professionals.

So, yep, ol' Gladdy got this one right; the culprit was certainly cultural conditioning.  He only got the country wrong.  It was the strict "by the book" discipline of the American controllers that kept them from interpreting what the words "WE'RE RUNNING OUT OF GAS YOU ASSHOLES!" might have actually meant in their special controllers' language.

And Russia?

While El Gladdero touched upon the militaristic tradition invading the cockpit, that's only an aspect of cultural conditioning.

There's also Men against Machine.

In summing up all of the above and ol' Gladdy, I don't see him as doing much more than pointing out "People will be people"; frailties, foibles, and all.  While it was good that attention was drawn to the atmosphere in the cockpit of the England crash, it was exceptionally shortsighted to only focus on Korea.  I'm sure the gang over at Japan Airlines and China Airlines were eating it up.

But all the rest?  As any airline disaster buff knows, there is almost never any similarity between crashes.  The ones where there is, like the DC-10 rear door where a whole two of them blew out before anything was done, become part of legend.

The same is true with pilot error, as evidenced above and below.  One guy uses the wrong word.  The next guy's got an ego problem.  The next plane's navigator is getting a divorce and is quietly sobbing in the dark, not paying any attention to his instruments.  The next team believes a faulty gauge, compensates for it and inadvertently puts the plane into a death spiral.  On and on.  You glance over the Mayday and Seconds From Disaster pages and, except for the fabled DC-10 door, no two are alike and few are even similar.

And, speaking of rare, once-in-a-lifetime events...

First off, just to get it out of the way, this is the complete opposite of Gladdy's little theory.

This isn't a case of the stern, unapproachable captain, it's a case of a rookie at the wheel; someone who everyone down to the janitor wouldn't hesitate to bark an order at.  On top of that, this being the first time he'd landed a Boeing 777 at SFO — designated a 'Special' airport by the FAA because it poses a few special challenges — my guess is he would have been quite receptive to any tips from the two seasoned veterans alongside.

To further magnify the difference, following Gladman's convention the two superiors wouldn't have been hesitant in the slightest to bark out a correction, right?  We're at the point where, if the Glad-dude is correct, then you could even say they would have been eager for an opportunity to demonstrate their superiority.

     "Watch your air speed!  You're a little slow!"

     "Straighten up!  You're drifting slightly to the right!"

     "Don't grip the wheel so tight!"

But, from what I've heard, none of this occurred.  Up until the last few seconds, it appears to be about as average a landing imaginable, with the only mystery being why the plane was 40 MPH below its landing speed at the very end.

Question asked, question answered.

In the interviews, the pilots said that they had set the auto throttle at 137 knots. That's the typical landing speed for the 777. What the NTSB has to confirm now is whether or not those controls were working.

Autothrottles typically have three settings — off, on and armed. An autothrottle that is armed but not on will remain at its previous speed, which was probably near idle, said Doug Moss, a pilot for a major U.S. airline and an aviation safety consultant in Torrance, Calif. Pilots will frequently shift to idle off and on when preparing to land in order to descend faster.

The pilot flying the plane had turned off his flight director, while the training captain had his flight director on, [NTSB Chairperson] Hersman said. The flight director computes and displays the proper pitch and bank angles required in order for the aircraft to follow a selected path.

In most airliners, an autothrottle will not turn on if one flight director is off and one on because it has to work in harmony with the flight directors — both need to be either on or off, Moss said.

Only moments before the crash did the training captain realize the autothrottle wasn't controlling the plane's speed, Hersman said.

"This is one of the two hallmarks of complexity and challenge in the industry right now," Moss said. "It's automation confusion because from what Deborah Hersman said, it appears very likely the pilots were confused as to what autothrottle and pitch mode the airplane was in. It's very likely they believed the autothrottles were on when in fact they were only armed."

So, like usual, we are left with a chain of events, any one of which, if removed, might have stopped the whole process in its tracks.

We'll start by noting all of the 'firsts':

— First time the pilot had landed a Boeing 777 at SFO

— First time the pilot and instructor had flown together

— First time the instructor had been in the instructor's role

In regards to the autothrottle not being on, that last point is probably critical.  He apparently hadn't learned yet that he can't be in 'instructor's mode' when the plane is actually going through maneuvers, he has to be in the same 'pilot's mode' that the pilot is, simply because, as demonstrated in this case, the two different mindsets view the instrument settings (and perhaps who's in control of them) slightly differently.

Then we'll throw in landing at a 'Special' airport for the first time — and over water, no less.  Spacial orientation is obviously much harder over water, simply because you don't have cute buildings and bridges lying around to give you a sense of height, speed and distance.

Then we'll toss in the fact that there's no 'pre-runway' at SFO.  As the veterans say about the place, if you're going to err, err on the high side.  Ten feet too low and you're in the bay.

So you could say the table was set for that once-in-a-lifetime event for the poor slob flying the plane — the fact that someone else in the cockpit was about to inadvertently disable a critical piece of equipment.  I've watched a lot of documentaries where some bizarre, inexplicable action on a pilot's part caused the crash, including some where an incorrect setting from the pilot in some navigational gear did them in, but not flat-out disabling something as vital as the autothrottle, even accidentally.

"So, did you find out the cause of the crash?"

"Yeah, the co-pilot accidentally disabled both engines."

It just doesn't happen, and yet here we are.  If the instructor had been just a little more experienced and known that he mentally had to be in the same mindset as the pilot during maneuvers; if the pilot had been experienced enough to double-check the airspeed and known what to look for when the autothrottle didn't appear to be working; if he'd already landed at SFO before and had been told to 'err on the high side'; if SFO had the barest of pre-runways; as we see in almost every disaster, every piece has to be in place.

As for those who made it through, it could be argued that this is the luckiest bunch of folks in the history of aviation disasters.  Even the planes that skitter to a stop without breaking up still usually lose half the passengers to the resultant fire.  But as soon as they start tipping, which they usually do, a serious disaster is almost guaranteed.  Once a wing tip catches the ground, that's when it starts cartwheeling and the NTSB ends up with fifteen million pieces to reassemble.  When you see that the Asiana flight got right to the point of cartwheeling... and then suddenly ran out of steam and flopped back down, you realize how unbelievably lucky these people were.

In contention for the 'luckiest' award would be the gang aboard the flight Cap'n Sully splashed into the Hudson River a few years ago.  That was the first time in aviation history that a commercial airliner had been ditched in the water with no loss of life.  Again, it's all about keeping the wings level.  If a wing tip touches ground, it just skids.  If it touches water, it's grabbed and it's bye-bye 285 lives.

When it's done right, however, as Cap'n Sully showed, it's like a great big water park ride.  After the initial jolt, it must have been terrific inside, with the big swooshing water sounds as the craft gently slowed down and that wonderful lapping-water dockside quiet when it stopped.

Just to break the mood I would have hollered, "Wow, that was great!  Let's do it again!"