And here's a NYT op-ed, written by a former pilot titled "Inside a Pilot’s Mind/After Germanwings Plane Crash, Pondering Pilot Psychology":
I flew many times with a born-again Christian who talked constantly about Adam and Eve and other Bible stories. Could his religious beliefs have caused us to handle an in-flight emergency differently? It never happened, so I can’t say. Another pilot would tell me about his crazy sex life on the road. He’d kiss his wife and kids goodbye and then become a totally different person for seven days.A top-rated comment there says:
But these are ordinary varieties of human behavior — nothing that would predict some catastrophic course of action....
I never met with a psychologist, and I had to take only one written psychiatric evaluation in my career...
Perhaps, though, it’s time to take a more searching interest in the minds of those to whom we entrust our safety when we fly....
The PBS aviation expert, Miles O'Brien, said on the NewsHour tonight that in the past, commercial pilots came from the military, so in a sense they had already been vetted before they started working in the industry. They were known quantities. That's not so today.But the top-rated comment there is:
This co-pilot was only 27 years old. The author's father (a life-long pilot) was struck by how little flight time the copilot had. I think that is significant, not because the copilot's flying skills were deficient, but because he had not been vetted, either by time or experience. He was an unknown.
[B]efore we all go on an extreme introspective journey and analyze this tragedy into the next century, shouldn't we all take a step back, breathe and acknowledge this was one person, among thousands and thousands in this career, who inexplicably did a horrific act?I can barely bring myself to write a sentence about how much that attitude bothers me. And yet, rereading it, I have to acknowledge that it's perfectly intelligent.
We simply cannot come up with technical fixes for everything that humans do. I will continue to trust the cockpit crew of whoever is flying my airliner. No amount of security, automated systems, etc. will ever replace our dependency on the humans in front.
The magnitude of the loss of life in an airliner crash takes our attention away from the everyday risk we expose ourselves to on the highway, subway, commuter train or other means of transportation.
We live every day with exposure to the mental state of others around us, whether they be driving our bus, sharing the road with us or handling our train.
Let's continue to give our pilots the benefit of the doubt. Our odds have been and will always be better with them.
Posts
71 comments:
Nobody vets medical doctors.
I flew many times with a born-again Christian who talked constantly about Adam and Eve and other Bible stories. Could his religious beliefs have caused us to handle an in-flight emergency differently?
What is this even supposed to mean? It sounds like he just wanted to bring up religion in some way (but of course, not islam). Weird.
We simply cannot come up with technical fixes for everything that humans do.
That's true enough. We can try to guard against the mostly likely issues, but there will always be someone or something that slips through our defenses. You cannot avoid all risk, you just have to draw reasonable lines.
That "why bother attitude" is not the attitude of major Airlines such as Delta. they spend major money continually updating their pilots' evaluations in simulators and in the latest stress situations where the pilots regularly face losing a rating if they appear stressed or show any weirdness.
It is analogous to a regular audit by an outside Bank Auditor and carries the most actual power of any job at the Airline.
It's not so much risk as profitable narrative that matters.
IMO the problem is most Germans are not able to think outside the bubble which would require a challenge to authority if communicated.
A guy who likes airplanes and physics is interested in technical puzzles, and loses interest as soon as it's a bezerk pilot.
Bezerk pilots are women's worry.
Another pilot would tell me about his crazy sex life on the road. He’d kiss his wife and kids goodbye and then become a totally different person for seven days.
That is just so wrong. That guy should never have been a pilot. He should have worked for the DEA instead.
I remember when airliners used to crash all the time.
It was worth reading newspapers then.
The Electra was technically the most interesting case. An obscure fully three dimensional coning instability when an engine mount was damaged.
I assume Lockheed had only done two dimensional instability analysis.
I once lived in a country where "In God We Trust" was the national motto and people living Christian values were considered normal, even valuable members of society. After a couple of hundred years they moved the motto to the edge of coins so you couldn't see it and the Christians were considered weirdos.
Guess what happened next.
Another nice case was a Texas commuter plane that it was determined had had a tailplane stall.
Then the tailplane was unable to generate enough downlard "lift" to hold the nose up, and down it went.
Now watch everyone go ape over the question of just how much medical privacy workers in public safety positions should have, especially in Germany, where no doubt such privacy laws are especially rigorous.
I mean, what's the point of a doctor declaring a patient who works in a "sensitive" position "unfit for work" if the only person who can mention that declaration to the employer is the patient himself? Talk about the inmates running the asylum!
The pilot couldn't get Intt the cockpit because airlines previously fortified the cockpit to protect from terrorists trying to get into the cockpit.
Nice.
There have been several occasions where doctors and nurses were serial killers. In the way that child molesters are attracted to certain occupations, serial killers are attracted to medicine and nursing. Word is out. If you're into mass slaughter, a commercial pilot license is the way to go......People are not always what they seem. Madoff looked respectable and trustworthy. Ditto Bill Cosby. For a lot of these sociopaths, the thrill is not pulling off the crime, but pulling off the masquerade of appearing normal. Robert Durst was able to convince twelve jurors that he was a cranky old man. That was probably a bigger rush than the murder and, perhaps, why he agreed to sit down for the tv interview.
You can always take measures to reduce and manage risk. The important considerations are cost and efficacy.
Sure, "shit happens." But that doesn't mean you don't try to improve safety.
William said...
If you're into mass slaughter, a commercial pilot license is the way to go.
Most people who are into mass slaughter are not suicidal.
"The pilot is the first to arrive at the scene of the accident."
That "top rated" comment is right on. Are we sure it was the NYT?
For the life of me I can't understand what bothered Althouse about it.
kzookitty
Accepting risks is another term for being alive. No avoiding it. But many ways to reduce it. All the rest is details, and per usual that's where the devil is.
We will have to know more about the medical excuse he was given. He may have been given a work excuse because he went in for diarrhea.
For the life of me I can't understand what bothered Althouse about it.
I'm mystified by that as well. Perhaps she is too, which is why she can barely bring herself to write a sentence about how much that attitude bothers her?
Grundoon: What country was that?
It sure as hell wasn't Germany; "Gott Mit Uns" is not "In God We Trust" - it's "God With Us". The difference isn't even subtle.
Plus, it was adopted after Prussian unification in 1871, and started on the rim of the coins it was on, and was hardly a reflection of humble Christianity, rather a unifying propaganda effort and military slogan.
Althouse, when you shake your case of the vapors [funnin' with you; don't get offended] maybe you can explain what is so horrifying about that comment?
I agree with it entirely and find it an eloquent pushback against the usual ZOMG SOMETHING MUST BE DONE reaction we usually get, wherein an entire industry or institution has to undergo tiresome and inefficient changes due to some statistically aberrant event that happened in the past and is not likely to be repeated whether NEW SAFETY MEASURES are enacted.
Some nutjob stole a kid during a custody dispute twelve states away and twenty years ago and I have to show my ID every damn time I enter the school my kids have attended for years and on whose PTA board I have sat for each of those years.
Etc.
Kamikaze Airline is one divine airline to ride. But their computer website doesn't seem to book round trips.
That New Yorker's attitude works well in New York where there is capitalist money and success everywhere. New Yorkers have good a reason to live and assume everyone else does too.
No wonder Al Qaeda's Muslims hated New Yorkers so much.
Yes, but more importantly, an obscure German website (the front page of which does not exactly scream "hard news") has claimed that he converted to Islam, and some credulous American websites have regurgitated that claim as fact, and thus was born a myth that we will be hearing from conspiracy theorists for as long as the story of this plane is remembered.
The reason that #1 comment sucks is that we must live in a world of organizations managed by Good Men in Good Systems, or not. And it does make all the difference which one you get.
Call that the great Men make history school of thought versus the all men are equally great schiool of thought.
BDNYC said...
You can always take measures to reduce and manage risk. The important considerations are cost and efficacy.
Sure, "shit happens." But that doesn't mean you don't try to improve safety.
Since the beginning of commercial airline flight, there has been 5 known cases of pilot suicide. In that same time, there has been upwards of 100 million flights. Those aren't exactly PowerBall odds but not to far from it. Can we do more to prevent that from happening again? Sure. How effective will those effort be? How much will they cost? Will spending the money to address this problem mean there won't be enough money to address other, perhaps more likely problems? What unintended cosequences will these new fixes introduce?
After 9/11, there was a lot of Security Theater going on. To hear the self-proclaimed security experts back them, no airliner should be allowed to fly with fewer than 20 air marshals guarding no more than 10 passengers who will be forced to fly nude, with no luggage.
YoungHegelian said...
I mean, what's the point of a doctor declaring a patient who works in a "sensitive" position "unfit for work" if the only person who can mention that declaration to the employer is the patient himself? Talk about the inmates running the asylum!
I used to administer the "Personnel Reliability Program (watching guys who handle Nukes) for an Army organization. Most every person on my roster outranked me, but I had nearly complete authority on whether we allowed them in the chain of command/custody. We looked at their personnel files, legal files, credit files, and most importantly medical records. There was a big warning sheet on the front of the file that informed all medical staff that only US Citizen Army officer Docs could see this patient and that any treatment had to be referred to me afterward. I was particularly interested in drugs or head injuries etc. Nothing was "private"
My full Colonel Commander had an auto accident where we was unconscious for 5 minutes. I had to go brief the General, who took him out of the nuclear chain of command for 6 months pending a full physical.
Of course we also had a complete, "Two Man Rule" for everything.
That top rated comment is an example of practicing acceptance.
Simple open-ended question:
As you buckle your seat belt, and get cozy, over the intercom you hear:
"Your pilot is a depressed, recent convert to Islam."
Does that make you more nervous or less nervous about your flight?
Of course we also had a complete, "Two Man Rule" for everything.
Cafeteria is perpetually tuned to CNN. In discussing the Germanwings accident they mentioned that the US airlines have a two-person rule for the cockpits. If one of the pilots leaves the cockpit he or she must be replaced by another pilot (I presume they meant a relief pilot such as is used on long-haul flights or if another pilot is dead-heading) or by a flight attendant.
That's a good thing. They could also fix it so that a lone pilot can never lock another pilot out of the cockpit.
If one of the pilots leaves the cockpit he or she must be replaced by another pilot (I presume they meant a relief pilot such as is used on long-haul flights or if another pilot is dead-heading) or by a flight attendant.
an ancillary rule that would help would be:
Single pilot remains in their seat until the second pilot returns.
Monitor stands by the door, prepared to open it if the single pilot stands or attempts to electro-lock the door.
"Yes, but more importantly, an obscure German website (the front page of which does not exactly scream "hard news") has claimed that he converted to Islam, and some credulous American websites have regurgitated that claim as fact, and thus was born a myth that we will be hearing from conspiracy theorists for as long as the story of this plane is remembered."
That's crazy talk! An Islamic terrorist deliberately crashing a plane killing all on board including hisself? Never happen.
Why does that attitude bother you?
Genuinely interested to know.
There have been a few comments here and there about the co-pilot's limited flight hours, 630 IIRC. That is (to me) a very small number for someone driving an A-320. Consider - when I was training in the 90's, 400 hours was generally considered the safe lower limit for operating light aircraft in actual instrument flight conditions (i.e. weather). The US Airline Transport Pilot rating legal MINIMUM is 1500 hours (but this presumably applied to the Captain / Pilot In Command - I'm pretty sure this co-pilot was not the PIC on this flight).
[ I wanted to mention here a paper written about 1980 (by my father, also named Fred Drinkwater) asserting that many accidents should be attributed to the poor training of new pilots at US air carriers, but I cannot find a link to it, or my original copy. Sigh. ]
Top rated comment = common sense. Creating the TSA and making travel much slower and expensive through silly searches does not make sense. By making it harder and less efficient to fly, we are probably causing 500-1000 excess deaths in the United States each year. Deer hitting cars have killed more Americans on U.S. soil than terrorists over the last 20 years.
Fred,
I thought the 630 hours was in A300's, not total log book time. I could be wrong...
Big Mike said...
"That's a good thing. They could also fix it so that a lone pilot can never lock another pilot out of the cockpit."
Unless, of course, the second pilot overcomes the third person, who may well be a stewardess. There's no way to design a malice-proof system. Even if you fly these planes remotely with no pilot on board, that's 100% effective until the day when someone breaks the comms encryption, or physically breaks into the control facility, or has a psychotic break and destroys the control facility.
As you buckle your seat belt, and get cozy,
"Cozy" on an airplane. Yeah, right.
Increasing the medical/psychiatric evaluations only helps if the results are then used to profile. And we're not allowed to do that, remember?
exhelodrvr1 said...
Increasing the medical/psychiatric evaluations only helps if the results are then used to profile. And we're not allowed to do that, remember?
These are nearly all white males. college grads, and potentially Frat boys. profiling is not only encouraged, it is required lest the "testosterone-addled brutes" cause problems...
We're just lucky Germany has strong gun control laws.
Miles O'Brien is correct. This was a young, inexperienced guy. Though his inexperience was not the reason for the crash, it's a problem with the system overall. And Miles is also right that pilots with military experience have had a vetting that is not present today.
O'Brien's comment is also an example of why it's nice to have a few reporters left who actually know their subject well.
There's no way to design a malice-proof system.
@Simon, should I read your comment to mean we shouldn't make it hard for a malicious person to crash an airplane full of passengers?
Of course we should make it hard. But like all protections, it's imperfect.
The best protection in anything is the skill and integrity of the person in charge. That is getting harder to assure, not easier.
New for the DSM-6 is PSDDD. First identified by social scientist Louis C.K., Perceived Sexual Deprivation Dysphoria Disorder causes a wide swath of antisocial behavior, especially heretofore unexplained aggression and impulsiveness in males and females.
Historically attributed to hysteria and the thought-to-be-myth of blue balls, the advent of PSDDD is now provoking research studies into hormonal neurotransmitters and PSI, though most psychiatric providers will, in the glorious tradition of Sigmund Freud and bar flies, be able to deduce such depravity, that is, mental illness and neurological dysfunction, with high efficiency and repetitive office visits of no more than fifteen minutes.
Young XY chromosomal patients diagnosed with PSDDD should be steered away from professions involving mass transit, while those presenting XX chromosomes should be kept within a soon to be determined radius of adult novelty stores, washing machines, and pregnancy termination facilities. Long-term partners of PSDDD sufferers should be held liable for quantity of service to XY patients, or quality of experience for XX patients. Comorbidity of sexually transmitted disease is a lesser concern, since a PSDDD diagnosis establishes onset and permanence of mental illness.
The "top comment" really bugs me, too.
The fact that not all problems can be solved and not all risk can be removed does not mean it's OK to adopt a there's-no-use-trying-to-fix-things attitude. Fuck that. Why are we trusting our lives to untested pilots? The other commenter's point about pulling commercial pilots from the pool of battle-tested, military pilots makes perfect sense. Alternatively, what about a rule ensuring no pilot be left alone in the cockpit? This is not an area where nothing can be done.
Malcolm Gladwell's excellent "Outliers" had a section about airline crashes being higher when the pilot and co-pilot where both from a cultures that had strict hierarchical traditions. Specifically, Korean Air had a high rate of crashes mainly because it was extremely difficult for the junior pilot to challenge the senior one when he was missing something obvious.
The airline made major changes to how their pilots were trained and the safety record improved significantly. They did not adopt the extremely dangerous attitude assuming you couldn't eliminate all risk.
Malcolm Gladwell's excellent "Outliers" had a section about airline crashes being higher when the pilot and co-pilot where both from a cultures that had strict hierarchical traditions. Specifically, Korean Air had a high rate of crashes mainly because it was extremely difficult for the junior pilot to challenge the senior one when he was missing something obvious.
The deadliest airline accident occurred on this day in 1977 when 2 fully loaded 747's met head on on the runway. Pilot error was the cause. Specifically, workload management and the inability of the two junior crew to alter a miss-perception by the Pilot in Command.
http://www.salon.com/2007/04/06/askthepilot227/
http://cf.alpa.org/internet/alp/2000/aug00p18.htm
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/space/final-eight-minutes.html
http://web.archive.org/web/20080228061831/http://casa.gov.au/fsa/2007/oct/44-49.pdf
The issue of low-time and inexperience always seem to come up in these situations, but don't forget in the Asiana 777 crash at SFO a couple of years ago the flight crew had a combined 30,000+ hours between them. And they screwed up a visual landing...something you learn in your first couple of hours as a student pilot.
Who vets the driver coming the other way on the road? We all rely on the sanity of at least dozens, perhaps hundreds or thousands of randomly selected individuals each day. It generally works out OK.
They had a number of checks and balances, but not as good as that used on American airlines.
The cabin normally would be locked.
There is a door control switch.
There are 3 settings there: UNLOCK, NORM and LOCK.
Most of the time the switch is set to NORM, which means it is locked.
When a pilot wanted to get back in, he used the intercom, and it is supposed to be unlocked. A secret code still needs to be used to unlock it, and agreen light goes on showing it is unlocked.
If the person inside doesn't unlock it, the person outside can enter a super secret code to unlock it. This does not unlock it right away, but if nothing happens in 30 seconds, the door is unlocked for five seconds.
However, the person inside can move the switch from NORM (which means lock) to LOCK (which means really, really lock it, and I mean it!!)
This locks the door for 5 minutes, after which the super secret emergency code works, unless the switch is moved back to NORMAL and LOCK again.
That actually may have given the pilot a chance to get in, if the co-pilot did not realize he had to set it to LOCK again. But maybe something would alerted him..
In any case, it took the plane eight minutes to crash. I'm not sure when the pilot first tried to get back in. That may not matter, because the five minutes that LOCK really, really, truly locks it starts when the toggle switch is first moved there.
But the person inside the cockpit can disable it by moving a control from normal to lock.
In the U.S. system one person is never left alone in the cockpit.
The flight attendant wouldn't have to overcome the rogue pilot, but just move the switch to UNLOCK for a few seconds.
This is like something out of GET SMART!
[B]efore we all go on an extreme introspective journey and analyze this tragedy into the next century, shouldn't we all take a step back, breathe and acknowledge this was one person, among thousands and thousands in this career, who inexplicably did a horrific act?
It's like being scolded by your grade school teacher for not being more open minded over something you know is dead wrong.
According to the New York Times a previous crash caused by pilot homicide/suicide was that of a Mozambique Airlines plane headed to Luanda, Angola, in November, 2013.
A previous case when a pilot was barred from the cockpit for a good reason was that of a Jet Blue flight in 2012 where the passengers restrained him after they thought he was acting erratically and the co-pilot made an emergency landing in Amarillo, Texas.
According to the New York Times a previous crash caused by pilot homicide/suicide was that of a Mozambique Airlines plane headed to Luanda, Angola, in November, 2013.
A previous case when a pilot was barred from the cockpit for a good reason was that of a Jet Blue flight in 2012 where the passengers restrained him after they thought he was acting erratically and the co-pilot made an emergency landing in Amarillo, Texas.
In this case it seems to have happened because the opilot was seen by a doctor (for depression? did he say he was suicidal?) who wrote a note saying he should be barred from flying.
The co-pilot tore up the note and left it in his house.
But he knew he would not be able to continue flying much longer.
So, as his swan song, he crashed the plane.
(Nobody is saying what his medical conddtion was, but he was in a hospital as recently as March 10. The hospital is not saying why, on grounds of patient privacy.)
Rhardin - I love airline disaster shows that show what went wrong and how they fixed it (such as square windows causing planes to explode from pressure at the beginning of the jet age. How they solved it was so interesting). Do you have links to those stories you mention?
As far as this pilot goes - he is not the first (not incl 9/11). You want to die? Go get in your glider or plane and do it alone asshole. I don't understand wanting to take people down with me and shaming my family.
the flight crew had a combined 30,000+ hours between them. And they screwed up a visual landing..
I think the issue with the crew is that on the 30,000 hours, little of it was off auto-pilot.
Further, apparently the Asian airlines tend to treat auto-pilot flying as the norm and spend little time on scenarios where the plane drops out of AP.
Whereas the traditional way of training was to work through the syllabus by actually flying and then start on the AP side.
This is the classic problem in building User interfaces, be it planes, nuclear powerplant control rooms or anesthesiology machines. auto interfaces that ease routine operations can be opaque during emergency situations.
Worst apparently is Airbus. too much automation in normal ops leads to major issues when a situation develops out of the operating envelope,
"The US Airline Transport Pilot rating legal MINIMUM is 1500 hours (but this presumably applied to the Captain / Pilot In Command - I'm pretty sure this co-pilot was not the PIC on this flight).
I wondered about the low hours and my impression was that it was commercial time or multi-engine time, not glider time.
Glider pilots can be good such as Sully and the pilot of the Gimli Glider.
A friend of mine flies for a major US airline and when he was a first officer often flew with a captain who was a transexual male to female who was 6 feet tall.
Psych evaluations must be fun for those.
I don't know what bothered Althouse about the top-rated comment, but what annoyed me was its smug vapidity. It states something that is completely true, obvious with a moment's thought, and completely worthless, reminding me of that famous joke about a balloon:
("Two men in a balloon get lost in the clouds. After some hours the mists part and they see they are close to an unfamiliar, rocky ground. Alarmed, they holler down to a man on the ground 'Where are we??' The man replies: 'You're in a balloon!'")
No doubt we put our lives to some extent or other in the hands of others all day, every day. And...so? Does that say squat about whether there is some useful modification to flying rules that could reduce the risk of this kind of disaster at a reasonable cost? Of course not.
This is the comment made by a student who wants to show the professor how smart he is, but who has nothing to actually contribute to the classroom conversation, and who has not actually learning anything from it so far. I'm sure Althouse is familiar with the type.
@Drill Sgt
I understand your point, but a visual approach/landing is basic airmanship. Even if they flew with the autopilot 100% of the time, the visual cues are exactly the same. They should have known just by looking whether the landing was going to be successful.
I believe the instructor knew it was a bad approach but didn't say anything because the PIC was senior to him.
"O' Brien's comment is also an example of why it's nice to have a few reporters left who actually know their subject well."
And they had really good graphics departments helping us rubes figure out what happened up there.
CNN + NBC gave us the pilot knocking on the door; ABC gave us the pilot in the cockpit! Yikes!
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/03/cable-news-insults-viewers-intelligence-again.html
heyboom & Drill Sgt: My take on that SFO incident was based on much talking and reading about CRM (Cockpit Resource Management), which is really a polite way of figuring out how one pilot tells the other a mistake is being made. One should not underestimate the effect of culture here, whether we are talking about "Confucian Respect" or "Military Rank Deference".
They let the plane hit the approach lights because no one wanted to be the first to object to the flight path.
My father (20,000 hours ATP) rightly refused to be my flight instructor because he thought I'd be too deferential to him on such points.
Two words: Robot Pilots
A couple of points. For many years the U.S. FAA prohibits scheduled passenger airliners from having only one person in the cockpit. Since most U.S. airliners have only two pilots, when one pilot needs a potty break a flight attendant remains in the cabin until the pilot returns.
In the U.S. our FAA for all practical purposes prohibits pilots of all levels from obtaining any sort of mental health counseling or treatment. Should a pilot be so foolish at to seek help he or she faces grounding and probable loss of career with six months.
Robot planes are not the answers. The Airbus is practically a robot plane now, and when something happens that the robot can't handle you get AF447.
Just last November a Lufthansa almost lost an Airbus when it suddenly went out of control because of a failure in the angle of attack system. In this failure mode the airplane will override the pilots desire to not crash. Something that's not possible in a Boeing.
http://avherald.com/h?article=47d74074
Five pilot induced suicides over 10 years and thousands of millions of flights is not a reason to invoke the politician's fallacy.
Fred Drinkwater said...
(Cockpit Resource Management),
One word: Tenerife.
Other great SFO story: the 1968 short landing of a JAL DC-8.
Captain Kohei Asoh took responsibility for the crash. At the National Transportation Safety Board hearing, he reportedly took the stand and said “As you Americans say, I f—ed up.”
Drill SGT: Tenerife. Heartbreaking story. One can see clearly, reading the reports now, the inevitable disaster coming. Weather, work rules, airport procedures, fatigue, all swirling around until the finale.
I remember the JAL DC-8 incident at SFO. In particular, a photo of a steel beam from the over-water approach light structure which had penetrated the fuselage.
No wonder my CFI used to get nervous when I'd let the airspeed drop a bit too much on final.
AF447- That something the robot plane couldn't handle was pilot error. The robot was telling the pilots that they were in error, but the pilots didn't believe it and couldn't figure it out in time.
Now they are saying it is vision problems, but maybe they weren't real.
I think we will find out that he identified as a female, wanted to be a transexual he-she, suffered from homosexual panic, with accompanying depression, anxiety and rage at the frustration of knowing that being truly who he was would deny him the opportunity to be a pilot, a captain…rage made worse by psychotropes either improperly prescribed or taken and/or withdrawn from use in a dangerous quick manner that precipitated psychotic fury.
Post a Comment