Here's another recent incident at Portland, OR (KPDX). When I first learned about it, I thought it was similar to the Austin, TX loss-of-separation. As the video in the link shows (start at about the 01:20 mark), the two UPS jets involved didn't get nearly as close. The event might not even qualify as a loss-of-separation incident. Still, the circumstances, except for the good weather, are remarkably similar. An aircraft is cleared to line up and wait as another aircraft is in the last stages of its final approach, and a go-around ensued. Go-arounds themselves are routine and have many causes. But this may be another example that the experts should review as they consider how well the system is working and what, if any, changes need to be made.
I usually don’t follow up your posts by reading comments - a hangover from less curated online experience. So I may not have heard suggestions about the sheer volume of air traffic. Is there a way to define a reasonable limit to traffic, taking into account the many human variables that you and your commenters have mentioned? A way besides “what the market will bear”? Vague question, but my fears are based on what I see at many airports - lines of people and planes, and not many margins for error. Thanks for your clear and interesting reportage, over many years.
I think that volume / capacity are obviously enormous concerns for air travel, in the long run. This is true in many senses of the term:
The over-crowding of the whole world tourism infrastructure. The at-limits nature of most parts of the US air travel infrastructure, from baggage handling to rental cars. The "no slack in the system" logic of airline operations, with everything running at near maximum capacity. And of course the one really inflexible limit — which is how many airliners can touch down (or take off) in a fixed amount of time on a given, high-demand runway. And this is to say nothing of environmental constraints in airport location and aircraft operation.
All of those factors are very real. *BUT* they don't seem to be causal elements in the *recent* wave of close-classes, operating lapses, and so on. That is because overall "throughput" of the system is only recently getting back to the 2019, pre-pandemic level. At most big airports, more flights and people were being handled four years ago than now. (I don't know the cargo trends, which might have held steadier through the pandemic than passenger loads.)
So, yes, capacity is a real issue for everything about air travel. But it wouldn't seem to be the force behind the recent series of lapses and close calls.
By chance I was talking with a group of professional pilots, military and civilian, recently. One of them said, "I just don't think the entire system has recovered from Covid." I think he was talking about training, operational fluency, staff turnover, etc.
Just three of their many interesting observations:
• To cover a certain distance, flights are 1,700 times safer than cars.
• A taxi ride of 30 minutes to the airport is 13 times more dangerous than a 5 hours flight.
• If you live for 85 years and you are on a flight every single hour of it, you will have 1 out of 1,500 chances to die. In a motorcycle, you could die 6 times.
Safety is only one factor in my personal transportation choices, and some have questioned my bicycling on safety grounds, but I'm still intact at age 77 after 50 years of commuting, urban, recreational, and touring bicycle travel. I gave up motorcycles after five years on them in my 20s, and I sold my car 23 years ago, now only renting one when there's no other choice, usually for business. I limit air travel, taking direct flights whenever possible, otherwise rely on trains or buses (or sometimes my folding bike).
Mobility makes life worth living, but a lot of current systems are unsustainable--economically, socially, and environmentally. So yes, be safe, but also practice some personal ESG.
I like riding bikes but don't like doing it in cities, because of the traffic dangers. (A scenic bike trail: great!) Trains to me are the most enjoyable form of mass transit, because they're nearly all "good" time. (So much of commercial air travel is "bad" time: waiting in lines, in taxis or cars from the airport to where you actually want to go, etc.)
I've only biked once in your home city of DC, and I found it quite safe, but that was in 2021 when Covid reduced traffic volumes. This visit came during a trip with the folding bike: direct flight to O'Hare from Calgary, bus from airport to Evanston, cycling to Chicago Union Station, Amtrak to Pittsburgh, riding the rail trail and tow path to Washington, Amtrak to New York and Boston, bus to Maine, and flights from Boston to Chicago and Calgary.
I'm the first to admit that this lifestyle is possible because I'm single, work mainly from home, and live in a "15-minute" neighborhood--most services within 15 minutes cycling or 30 minutes by foot and/or transit--near the center of a city with good bike and transit infrastructure. Calgary has more than 600 miles of paved pathways and segregated cycle tracks, and about 300 miles are plowed in winter (when I put studded tires on the around-town bike). I've met a few families with young children that manage car-free living, even in winter cities like Calgary, Edmonton, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Toronto, and Montreal; but it is undoubtedly challenging, and certainly not for everyone. Some of it is "virtue signaling," for sure, but also attempting to lead by example and show what might be feasible in a future with better urban design, public transit, and environmental commitment.
My adult cycling began as commuting, became recreation, and turned into principal transportation in the 1990s when I was working on a corporate "greenhouse gas action plan" and decided to create one for myself--atoning for decades of travel with cars, trucks, SUVs, and motorcycles, as well as work in the oil and gas sector. I also haven't mentioned 20 years owning and riding horses, including nearly 1,000 miles on the road with a horse-drawn traveling theater. Now there's an interesting safety and environmental topic, for another day.
There are! But alas no one would go for them (and they probably wouldn't be practical).
For instance: passing "proficiency" tests at regular intervals — every 90 days for night flights, every year (in practical terms, every six months) for instrument currency, every year for flight reviews and insurance. Etc.
Weirdly, I have thought a million times, and I am sure most everyone with a pilot certificate has, that the most challenging and dangerous part of most flights is *driving back from the airport.* In the air, your safety is 98% up to you. On the road, you don't know who has been drinking, who is going to swerve across the median, who is going to run a red light, who is looking at a phone.
So, road traffic could be so much safer. But that would require a whole different culture and system.
Around three and a half decades ago, I taught a friend to drive, a British woman who had had absolutely no experience if I remember correctly. It was downright scary. Whereas, when I got flying lessons for my niece, it wasn't at all scary, despite her age (7). There was noone anywhere near us in the air, and of course the instructor had all the controls necessary to take over if he needed to do so (he didn't).
I find the numbers of phones and other driver distractions especially scary. l used to use my bicycle for basic transportation when I lived in DC. In the '80s, I rode around 30,000 miles on DC city streets, and another 4,000 on DC area bike paths plus the tow path, and over 2000 miles of bicycle trips in Colorado, Oregon and California, the Canadian Rockies, and two trips in France. Sometime in the '00s, after I'd moved back to Boston, I quit riding on city streets, except for very short distances where I could go most of the way on a bicycle path which I can got onto only about half a mile from my house, and which I can take into Cambridge.
Besides the culture difference (driving is almost an entitlement, flying is a carefully regimented and overseen privilege), there is the question of the manpower required to keep pilots on their toes. It requires flight instructors, who may be just starting out themselves, check pilots, and examiners to teach and monitor all the stages of training and then test for currency at regular intervals. While, in most countries, 16-18 year olds must jump through many hoops to start driving (and it can take months to find an examiner to complete the process), after that they are clear for years. Maybe this is because driving, in much of the US, is something you need to be able to do to earn a living.
Yes, good point (on the organizational scale it takes to keep the pilot establishment running.)
I haven't checked the latest figures, but as ballpark guesses:
- Let's over-estimate the number of people with pilot certificates in the US at 1 million. (Maybe closer to 700k? Anyhow that is the range.)
- Let's under-estimate the number of people in the US with driver's licenses at 200 million. (Maybe closer to 240 - 250?)
As a first approximation, the scale of training, inspection, counseling, monitoring, etc for the driver population is at least 200 times greater than handling the pilot population. Good luck to our DMVs!
In Germany they seem to do a much better job of teaching driving and having less chaotic roads despite much higher speeds. I think we don't try very hard, and I think we could improve our roads by adopting a German type system.
Your hypothesis about needing to drive to earn a living is interesting, but I suspect it's not correct for poor and black people, who get a lot of cruel and unusual punishment with respect to fines, licenses pulled, and the like. We also allow civil asset forfeiture, although Rep Raskin and Rep Walberg (R-MI, I think) are trying to do something about that.
FYI, I'm sure you heard of it, but just in case, Freakonomics Radio podcast just finished a 3 episode series (Episodes 534-536) on airlines and airline travel, including one on airline safety.
I suspect the high success rate of airline safety is due to the all important concept of "fix the problem, not the blame." If we backslide into a "Who screwed up?" attitude, we risk losing that safety record - which means potentially massive loss of life. Systems have to be "idiot proof" - meaning redundancies at every level. Human error is and always will be a factor, so "worst case scenarios" must always be considered. If there are increasing "close calls," then by all means review the procedures and increase redundancies where needed.
However, each redundancy involves greater expense and therefore cuts into profits, and so it is clear that airlines would much rather eliminate these time-consuming, profit-gobbling steps. Given the sometimes cozy relationship between the regulators and the regulated, this often results in weakened oversight. Consider the recent series of high-profile railroad derailments in the Midwest - in a quest for greater and greater profit, safety considerations can lose their urgency.
Yes, excellent points. I know a lot of aviation-world useful catch phrases — from "aviate, navigate, communicate — in that order" to "better to be on the ground wishing you were in the air, than vice versa." Or "when there's doubt, there's no doubt" — about go/no-go decisions.
I hadn't remembered "fix the problem, not the blame," but that is exactly on point.
Profits over safety have made the railroads and air travel less safe. It brings to mind Boeing, which had long favored solid engineering over profits. Then it moved its engineering-heavy headquarters from Seattle to Chicago, where the financial experts replaced the engineer focus.
Then we learned that, on their newly designed planes, much of the systems checks were certified by Boeing and acknowledged by the FAA. Several disastrous plane crashes followed as well as stories of shoddy work at their union-free new facility in the Carolinas.
Now Boeing is moving its headquarters from Chicago to suburban Washington, where it will be closer to government and Congress. More federal funding and soft regs rather than primary focus on basic engineering?
I am reminded of the Flanders & Swan song about flying. Flanders said that he was confident that the plane was beautifully engineered and that nothing could go wrong. Then the ash tray fell to the floor.
In choosing between flying and the railroad, my safety choice might be driving.
Thank you. Yes, the Boeing saga of the "accountants in charge" era has been cautionary. So far *in the US* it has not led to casualties, although the world is all too aware of what happened with the 737 Max in Ethiopia and Indonesia.
In a way it is :"rational" for Boeing to move its HQ to the DC area, because so much of its work is military related. But the cultural symbolism (and inevitably effects) are as you fear.
Back in another era, when I was writing China Airborne, one of the main themes was the way Boeing itself, as a company, had largely willed the revolution in air safety within China. Obviously it had an interest in doing so — the Chinese airlines market wasn't going to develop, if the airplanes kept crashing — but it was also part of its culture in that era.
Mar 12, 2023·edited Mar 12, 2023Liked by James Fallows
Jim You are authoritative on air travel as a long-time pilot. I have only been a passenger.
In 1949, after departing NYC, the steward announced that there was a slight problem, as I watched fuel being dumped into the Atlantic. He assured us there was no problem, as we saw emergency vehicles being rushed to an empty portion of the air field.
In 1954, as an RAF wing commander was flying me over Suez, I asked if our plane was designed to fly on a single engine. His response: ‘We’ll find out.’
Also in 1954, I was flying on a DC 3 from Cairo to Cyprus. The plane was overloaded with passengers and goats. We only reached 1000 feet 90 miles later in Alexandria.
Also, in 1954, I was in Juba, southern Sudan. Our departure was delayed for a day because the airfield had washed away. Later, in Port Sudan, our departure was delayed because the flight engineer hadn’t recovered from a hangover. The take off was hairy.
In 1964 I was flying over Congolese rebel territory in an Army C 46 when the copilot came back and handed me a parachute. Huh? “When you hear four beeps, get your ass out of the plane.” HUH? They had forgotten to refuel in Coquihatville.. Dead stick emergency landing went well.
Also, in 1964 I learned that a C130 could reverse props while landing. It was in Kigali, where I was in the copilot’s seat and saw us approaching the end of the runway where there was a 2000 foot drop.
In 1965 I was in Paulis, in the northeastern part of the Congo. I had arrived on a CIA-operated C 46..Later, at the airport I saw a USAF crew trading on the black market with mercenaries. Jose, his brakes failing, flew his C-46 into a large ant hill and his plane starting leaking fuel. I helped rescue the passengers before the USAF could come to help.
My subsequent flight experiences have been less stressful.
It seems remarkable that in this age of digitization that the cockpit recorders only tape two hours. Particularly since aircraft have become so reliable that they can fly multi leg flights that take nearly all day and night.
Yes. There must be some rationalization or excuse for the 2-hour system. But there is no good reason for it. And it could be changed almost instantly. I can give them my little Sony recorders and the jack that fits right into the intercom. I know it works ...
The administrator was not wrong when he said the system worked " as designed", to a point. As shown in the AUS incident, and again at BOS, flight crew and /or ATC intervention filled the gap between normal and abnormal ops. Another reason why FAR121.542 prohibits non-essential communication during critical phases of flight ( colloquially the Sterile Cockpit Rule). Both points illustrate the need for constant, distraction-free position and situational awareness. That said, it is know that pilots are not as good at monitoring as they are at 'doing' tasks assigned to modern flight management systems. Ordinary, daily routine can lead to complacency, the arch enemy of safe flying operations. Hopefully the coolest heads in the business will search deeply to find solutions to these kinds of problems that treat the disease rather than just the symptoms.
Yes, very well put. And related to what Scott Douglas is saying above.
I suspect that the Learjet, Maui, and of course Austin (Southwest) episodes will be the ones most carefully studied on these attention-management, and cockpit-resource-management, issues.
It is one of the toughest questions, how to ensure accurate and timely intervention when the automation fails. Lot of moving parts there. I operated in BOS for most of my life, and can say the 'Landing 4, takeoff on 9' configuration has seen enough conflicts to make me always wary. Whatever it takes, addressing incursions like these is essential.
Question for James and other knowledgeable people: How much do the systems depend on the relevant people paying full attention for as long as possible?
I ask because, anecdotally, it feels like people get distracted more easily than, say, 20 or 30 years ago. We've all experienced this. Is it possible that a decrease in what's considered paying attention could increase incidents in a system with a now-dated definition of paying attention?
I'm not suggesting anything as egregious as the Lear pilots stealing glances at their phones. Just what would seem the inevitable consequences of how most of us live now.
Scott, excellent question. The answer is that I just don't know.
One of the reasons I was originally drawn to the flying life back in the 1990s was that it demanded my *complete* attention. I couldn't think about or worry about anything else, because I was so fully engaged in: what was the next way point / where will the plane be two minutes / how does the engine look / which runway am I likely to be sequenced for / what are the winds / and so on. I have always found it an enforced "in the moment"-ism, and have never found myself bored.
Obviously I know nothing about doing this as an actual job, in a "real" airplane — with all the procedures that are involved. And I have only once had a look inside a working air-traffic control facility.
My *observation* is that the ATC culture is more alert to these attention issues — switching people off stations at set (short) intervals, relieving controllers if they've just handled a stressful situation, etc. And some of these recent events, notably the FedEx crew that avoided a catastrophe in Austin, suggest flight crews that are fully absorbed and "situationally aware." (While the evidence still has to come in, at first glance the controller is the one who seems to have lost focus in Austin. But we'll see.)
It's an excellent question, and one I hope and assume that the aviation safety people will be including now.
Susan, thank you. I hope it will all just turn out to be coincidence — or, even better, the spur for re-examination of training, procedure, fail-safe, and so on.
Here's another recent incident at Portland, OR (KPDX). When I first learned about it, I thought it was similar to the Austin, TX loss-of-separation. As the video in the link shows (start at about the 01:20 mark), the two UPS jets involved didn't get nearly as close. The event might not even qualify as a loss-of-separation incident. Still, the circumstances, except for the good weather, are remarkably similar. An aircraft is cleared to line up and wait as another aircraft is in the last stages of its final approach, and a go-around ensued. Go-arounds themselves are routine and have many causes. But this may be another example that the experts should review as they consider how well the system is working and what, if any, changes need to be made.
https://youtu.be/LDNK0tg38lk?t=82
I usually don’t follow up your posts by reading comments - a hangover from less curated online experience. So I may not have heard suggestions about the sheer volume of air traffic. Is there a way to define a reasonable limit to traffic, taking into account the many human variables that you and your commenters have mentioned? A way besides “what the market will bear”? Vague question, but my fears are based on what I see at many airports - lines of people and planes, and not many margins for error. Thanks for your clear and interesting reportage, over many years.
Thanks for reading and weighing in.
I think that volume / capacity are obviously enormous concerns for air travel, in the long run. This is true in many senses of the term:
The over-crowding of the whole world tourism infrastructure. The at-limits nature of most parts of the US air travel infrastructure, from baggage handling to rental cars. The "no slack in the system" logic of airline operations, with everything running at near maximum capacity. And of course the one really inflexible limit — which is how many airliners can touch down (or take off) in a fixed amount of time on a given, high-demand runway. And this is to say nothing of environmental constraints in airport location and aircraft operation.
All of those factors are very real. *BUT* they don't seem to be causal elements in the *recent* wave of close-classes, operating lapses, and so on. That is because overall "throughput" of the system is only recently getting back to the 2019, pre-pandemic level. At most big airports, more flights and people were being handled four years ago than now. (I don't know the cargo trends, which might have held steadier through the pandemic than passenger loads.)
So, yes, capacity is a real issue for everything about air travel. But it wouldn't seem to be the force behind the recent series of lapses and close calls.
By chance I was talking with a group of professional pilots, military and civilian, recently. One of them said, "I just don't think the entire system has recovered from Covid." I think he was talking about training, operational fluency, staff turnover, etc.
We will see. And again my thanks.
For a useful analysis of the comparative safety of passenger transportation modes, based on 10 years of US data, see: https://turbli.com/blog/the-safest-transport-modes-ranked-by-statistics-from-10-years-of-data/
Just three of their many interesting observations:
• To cover a certain distance, flights are 1,700 times safer than cars.
• A taxi ride of 30 minutes to the airport is 13 times more dangerous than a 5 hours flight.
• If you live for 85 years and you are on a flight every single hour of it, you will have 1 out of 1,500 chances to die. In a motorcycle, you could die 6 times.
Safety is only one factor in my personal transportation choices, and some have questioned my bicycling on safety grounds, but I'm still intact at age 77 after 50 years of commuting, urban, recreational, and touring bicycle travel. I gave up motorcycles after five years on them in my 20s, and I sold my car 23 years ago, now only renting one when there's no other choice, usually for business. I limit air travel, taking direct flights whenever possible, otherwise rely on trains or buses (or sometimes my folding bike).
Mobility makes life worth living, but a lot of current systems are unsustainable--economically, socially, and environmentally. So yes, be safe, but also practice some personal ESG.
Thank you, this is all fascinating.
I like riding bikes but don't like doing it in cities, because of the traffic dangers. (A scenic bike trail: great!) Trains to me are the most enjoyable form of mass transit, because they're nearly all "good" time. (So much of commercial air travel is "bad" time: waiting in lines, in taxis or cars from the airport to where you actually want to go, etc.)
And agree on the overall sustainability issues.
I've only biked once in your home city of DC, and I found it quite safe, but that was in 2021 when Covid reduced traffic volumes. This visit came during a trip with the folding bike: direct flight to O'Hare from Calgary, bus from airport to Evanston, cycling to Chicago Union Station, Amtrak to Pittsburgh, riding the rail trail and tow path to Washington, Amtrak to New York and Boston, bus to Maine, and flights from Boston to Chicago and Calgary.
I'm the first to admit that this lifestyle is possible because I'm single, work mainly from home, and live in a "15-minute" neighborhood--most services within 15 minutes cycling or 30 minutes by foot and/or transit--near the center of a city with good bike and transit infrastructure. Calgary has more than 600 miles of paved pathways and segregated cycle tracks, and about 300 miles are plowed in winter (when I put studded tires on the around-town bike). I've met a few families with young children that manage car-free living, even in winter cities like Calgary, Edmonton, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Toronto, and Montreal; but it is undoubtedly challenging, and certainly not for everyone. Some of it is "virtue signaling," for sure, but also attempting to lead by example and show what might be feasible in a future with better urban design, public transit, and environmental commitment.
My adult cycling began as commuting, became recreation, and turned into principal transportation in the 1990s when I was working on a corporate "greenhouse gas action plan" and decided to create one for myself--atoning for decades of travel with cars, trucks, SUVs, and motorcycles, as well as work in the oil and gas sector. I also haven't mentioned 20 years owning and riding horses, including nearly 1,000 miles on the road with a horse-drawn traveling theater. Now there's an interesting safety and environmental topic, for another day.
Jim, are there lessons for car drivers in aviation safety management?
There are! But alas no one would go for them (and they probably wouldn't be practical).
For instance: passing "proficiency" tests at regular intervals — every 90 days for night flights, every year (in practical terms, every six months) for instrument currency, every year for flight reviews and insurance. Etc.
Weirdly, I have thought a million times, and I am sure most everyone with a pilot certificate has, that the most challenging and dangerous part of most flights is *driving back from the airport.* In the air, your safety is 98% up to you. On the road, you don't know who has been drinking, who is going to swerve across the median, who is going to run a red light, who is looking at a phone.
So, road traffic could be so much safer. But that would require a whole different culture and system.
Around three and a half decades ago, I taught a friend to drive, a British woman who had had absolutely no experience if I remember correctly. It was downright scary. Whereas, when I got flying lessons for my niece, it wasn't at all scary, despite her age (7). There was noone anywhere near us in the air, and of course the instructor had all the controls necessary to take over if he needed to do so (he didn't).
I find the numbers of phones and other driver distractions especially scary. l used to use my bicycle for basic transportation when I lived in DC. In the '80s, I rode around 30,000 miles on DC city streets, and another 4,000 on DC area bike paths plus the tow path, and over 2000 miles of bicycle trips in Colorado, Oregon and California, the Canadian Rockies, and two trips in France. Sometime in the '00s, after I'd moved back to Boston, I quit riding on city streets, except for very short distances where I could go most of the way on a bicycle path which I can got onto only about half a mile from my house, and which I can take into Cambridge.
Besides the culture difference (driving is almost an entitlement, flying is a carefully regimented and overseen privilege), there is the question of the manpower required to keep pilots on their toes. It requires flight instructors, who may be just starting out themselves, check pilots, and examiners to teach and monitor all the stages of training and then test for currency at regular intervals. While, in most countries, 16-18 year olds must jump through many hoops to start driving (and it can take months to find an examiner to complete the process), after that they are clear for years. Maybe this is because driving, in much of the US, is something you need to be able to do to earn a living.
Yes, good point (on the organizational scale it takes to keep the pilot establishment running.)
I haven't checked the latest figures, but as ballpark guesses:
- Let's over-estimate the number of people with pilot certificates in the US at 1 million. (Maybe closer to 700k? Anyhow that is the range.)
- Let's under-estimate the number of people in the US with driver's licenses at 200 million. (Maybe closer to 240 - 250?)
As a first approximation, the scale of training, inspection, counseling, monitoring, etc for the driver population is at least 200 times greater than handling the pilot population. Good luck to our DMVs!
228 million have drivers licenses: https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2019/dl1c.cfm
(I'd say you were quite close.)
In Germany they seem to do a much better job of teaching driving and having less chaotic roads despite much higher speeds. I think we don't try very hard, and I think we could improve our roads by adopting a German type system.
Your hypothesis about needing to drive to earn a living is interesting, but I suspect it's not correct for poor and black people, who get a lot of cruel and unusual punishment with respect to fines, licenses pulled, and the like. We also allow civil asset forfeiture, although Rep Raskin and Rep Walberg (R-MI, I think) are trying to do something about that.
FYI, I'm sure you heard of it, but just in case, Freakonomics Radio podcast just finished a 3 episode series (Episodes 534-536) on airlines and airline travel, including one on airline safety.
https://freakonomics.com/series/freakonomics-radio/
Check it out.
Thank you! I was not aware of this; will check it out.
I suspect the high success rate of airline safety is due to the all important concept of "fix the problem, not the blame." If we backslide into a "Who screwed up?" attitude, we risk losing that safety record - which means potentially massive loss of life. Systems have to be "idiot proof" - meaning redundancies at every level. Human error is and always will be a factor, so "worst case scenarios" must always be considered. If there are increasing "close calls," then by all means review the procedures and increase redundancies where needed.
However, each redundancy involves greater expense and therefore cuts into profits, and so it is clear that airlines would much rather eliminate these time-consuming, profit-gobbling steps. Given the sometimes cozy relationship between the regulators and the regulated, this often results in weakened oversight. Consider the recent series of high-profile railroad derailments in the Midwest - in a quest for greater and greater profit, safety considerations can lose their urgency.
All true. Well put.
Yes, excellent points. I know a lot of aviation-world useful catch phrases — from "aviate, navigate, communicate — in that order" to "better to be on the ground wishing you were in the air, than vice versa." Or "when there's doubt, there's no doubt" — about go/no-go decisions.
I hadn't remembered "fix the problem, not the blame," but that is exactly on point.
Profits over safety have made the railroads and air travel less safe. It brings to mind Boeing, which had long favored solid engineering over profits. Then it moved its engineering-heavy headquarters from Seattle to Chicago, where the financial experts replaced the engineer focus.
Then we learned that, on their newly designed planes, much of the systems checks were certified by Boeing and acknowledged by the FAA. Several disastrous plane crashes followed as well as stories of shoddy work at their union-free new facility in the Carolinas.
Now Boeing is moving its headquarters from Chicago to suburban Washington, where it will be closer to government and Congress. More federal funding and soft regs rather than primary focus on basic engineering?
I am reminded of the Flanders & Swan song about flying. Flanders said that he was confident that the plane was beautifully engineered and that nothing could go wrong. Then the ash tray fell to the floor.
In choosing between flying and the railroad, my safety choice might be driving.
Thank you. Yes, the Boeing saga of the "accountants in charge" era has been cautionary. So far *in the US* it has not led to casualties, although the world is all too aware of what happened with the 737 Max in Ethiopia and Indonesia.
In a way it is :"rational" for Boeing to move its HQ to the DC area, because so much of its work is military related. But the cultural symbolism (and inevitably effects) are as you fear.
Back in another era, when I was writing China Airborne, one of the main themes was the way Boeing itself, as a company, had largely willed the revolution in air safety within China. Obviously it had an interest in doing so — the Chinese airlines market wasn't going to develop, if the airplanes kept crashing — but it was also part of its culture in that era.
Jim You are authoritative on air travel as a long-time pilot. I have only been a passenger.
In 1949, after departing NYC, the steward announced that there was a slight problem, as I watched fuel being dumped into the Atlantic. He assured us there was no problem, as we saw emergency vehicles being rushed to an empty portion of the air field.
In 1954, as an RAF wing commander was flying me over Suez, I asked if our plane was designed to fly on a single engine. His response: ‘We’ll find out.’
Also in 1954, I was flying on a DC 3 from Cairo to Cyprus. The plane was overloaded with passengers and goats. We only reached 1000 feet 90 miles later in Alexandria.
Also, in 1954, I was in Juba, southern Sudan. Our departure was delayed for a day because the airfield had washed away. Later, in Port Sudan, our departure was delayed because the flight engineer hadn’t recovered from a hangover. The take off was hairy.
In 1964 I was flying over Congolese rebel territory in an Army C 46 when the copilot came back and handed me a parachute. Huh? “When you hear four beeps, get your ass out of the plane.” HUH? They had forgotten to refuel in Coquihatville.. Dead stick emergency landing went well.
Also, in 1964 I learned that a C130 could reverse props while landing. It was in Kigali, where I was in the copilot’s seat and saw us approaching the end of the runway where there was a 2000 foot drop.
In 1965 I was in Paulis, in the northeastern part of the Congo. I had arrived on a CIA-operated C 46..Later, at the airport I saw a USAF crew trading on the black market with mercenaries. Jose, his brakes failing, flew his C-46 into a large ant hill and his plane starting leaking fuel. I helped rescue the passengers before the USAF could come to help.
My subsequent flight experiences have been less stressful.
Wow!!! What a saga. For better or worse, I have no set of stories to compare with that.
It seems remarkable that in this age of digitization that the cockpit recorders only tape two hours. Particularly since aircraft have become so reliable that they can fly multi leg flights that take nearly all day and night.
Yes. There must be some rationalization or excuse for the 2-hour system. But there is no good reason for it. And it could be changed almost instantly. I can give them my little Sony recorders and the jack that fits right into the intercom. I know it works ...
I suspect it is "Because it has always been done this way."
The administrator was not wrong when he said the system worked " as designed", to a point. As shown in the AUS incident, and again at BOS, flight crew and /or ATC intervention filled the gap between normal and abnormal ops. Another reason why FAR121.542 prohibits non-essential communication during critical phases of flight ( colloquially the Sterile Cockpit Rule). Both points illustrate the need for constant, distraction-free position and situational awareness. That said, it is know that pilots are not as good at monitoring as they are at 'doing' tasks assigned to modern flight management systems. Ordinary, daily routine can lead to complacency, the arch enemy of safe flying operations. Hopefully the coolest heads in the business will search deeply to find solutions to these kinds of problems that treat the disease rather than just the symptoms.
Yes, very well put. And related to what Scott Douglas is saying above.
I suspect that the Learjet, Maui, and of course Austin (Southwest) episodes will be the ones most carefully studied on these attention-management, and cockpit-resource-management, issues.
It is one of the toughest questions, how to ensure accurate and timely intervention when the automation fails. Lot of moving parts there. I operated in BOS for most of my life, and can say the 'Landing 4, takeoff on 9' configuration has seen enough conflicts to make me always wary. Whatever it takes, addressing incursions like these is essential.
Question for James and other knowledgeable people: How much do the systems depend on the relevant people paying full attention for as long as possible?
I ask because, anecdotally, it feels like people get distracted more easily than, say, 20 or 30 years ago. We've all experienced this. Is it possible that a decrease in what's considered paying attention could increase incidents in a system with a now-dated definition of paying attention?
I'm not suggesting anything as egregious as the Lear pilots stealing glances at their phones. Just what would seem the inevitable consequences of how most of us live now.
Scott, excellent question. The answer is that I just don't know.
One of the reasons I was originally drawn to the flying life back in the 1990s was that it demanded my *complete* attention. I couldn't think about or worry about anything else, because I was so fully engaged in: what was the next way point / where will the plane be two minutes / how does the engine look / which runway am I likely to be sequenced for / what are the winds / and so on. I have always found it an enforced "in the moment"-ism, and have never found myself bored.
Obviously I know nothing about doing this as an actual job, in a "real" airplane — with all the procedures that are involved. And I have only once had a look inside a working air-traffic control facility.
My *observation* is that the ATC culture is more alert to these attention issues — switching people off stations at set (short) intervals, relieving controllers if they've just handled a stressful situation, etc. And some of these recent events, notably the FedEx crew that avoided a catastrophe in Austin, suggest flight crews that are fully absorbed and "situationally aware." (While the evidence still has to come in, at first glance the controller is the one who seems to have lost focus in Austin. But we'll see.)
It's an excellent question, and one I hope and assume that the aviation safety people will be including now.
Thanks for this important post Jim. I feel safer just knowing YOU are paying attention.
Susan, thank you. I hope it will all just turn out to be coincidence — or, even better, the spur for re-examination of training, procedure, fail-safe, and so on.