Don't you just love it when we get to tell the stories? The big jet
full of passengers, diving at the threshold, throttles back to idle,
full flap, side-slip even, whhooh! but he gets her on the ground.
'Well done, Captain.' ''T's alright, son. Now go back and collect the
passenger feedback survey forms.'
Down here we call it 'shooting a line'. Behind every aviators' bar
there's a 'Line Book' into which are entered the very best yarns.
'There I was...nothing on the clock but the maker's name...' Get your
story in the book and you drink for free all night.
A mate's shooting a line now, as it happens. It's about the bloke who
tried to loop a Macchi (single engine jet advanced trainer) at 40,000
feet. The engine flames out, the pressurisation seal fails to hold, so
the cockpit explosively decompresses, with the usual adiabatic fog,
noise, major unplanned body gas emissions from all orifices, lungs
(gulp!!) inflate from overpressure in the oxy mask, and so on. A tad
unhinged by the circumstances, the pilot blurts out a Mayday call.
I'm amazed. 'Who'd have a go at a loop at that height?', I ask.
My mate looks at me nonplussed, then contemptous. 'You're missing the
point, as usual,' he snarls, no doubt thinking my response has just
cost him his due reward, 'It's not that he tried a loop, you moron,
it's that he made the Mayday call, gave himself away. He's admitting
being fazed! You just don't do that! Recover, relight the jet, etc.,
etc., come back and land, but say nothing.'
Hmm. It's like he's saying, 'You just don't Go Around, do you? never!'
Could this be the same thing? Male ego? Aaargghhh, no! Not that again!
Why not? In jungle survival training you learn to light a fire with
only wet wood. Just takes persistence. (Mind you, a Swiss Army pocket
knife with a large Propane bottle attached would be kinda handy.) So,
I'm persistent, by both temperament and training. Hang in there, Two.
Back to the stories. In the aviation magazines, they invariably turn
up under a banner 'Santayana' (thanks Dave), or, 'I Learned about
Flying From That'. Aren't they great?
And didn't we get some beauties in the 'Go Around' debate? For sure,
we also saw that there are some mighty good SOPs around out there. But
isn't it true that a few (lot of?) folk remain who don't quite do
what's expected of them, especially in the tight situation? Seems to
be the case, from the debate. What are we doing about it? Anything?
What is 'it' again? Let's be honest and blunt. It is ego involvement
in aeronautical decision-making and crew participation. It lies at the
root of nearly all of the 80% of accidents that are avoidable. It is
certainly behind all of the incidents just recently told in the Go
Around stories. And we have learned...? We are inroducing CRM programs
that...?
Recent neurological research (Damasio) shows that decision making is
entirely emotional. Entirely. There's more. A transport industry study
finds that the operator of a vehicle is 1,000 times more likely to
accept a risk factor than a supervisor - yes, that's what it says,
being on the controls means you are one thousand times more likely to
take a chance, accept danger! Given that the figure is kinda high, you
can still relate to the general idea, can't you? (I'm following up on
this study and will report later.) What are we doing about this stuff?
Need any more motivation? Take a peek at:
Passengers?? Consumers?? Who do they think they are? Ralph Nader?
Well...would you and/or your clients rather have these folk setting
the standards for individual pilot safety preparedness? Sooner or
later, consumer pressure might just do that. As I keep saying, we can
and should get there first.
Well, gotta go. Another mate's turned up, an airline pilot, and he's
offered to share a bottle (or two, or...) of wine, and he can afford
the really nice stuff. I've got one more issue to raise along these
lines, but it'll have to wait till tomorrow.
Cheers
Doug