They Are Going To Die
And Don't Know It!
Part of airline flying is
the non-stop procession of training, retraining, and then training some
more. Not everyone enjoyed this regimen. I was one of the more
"sick" ones who not only looked forward to it but got to be occasionally
involved in the teaching end of it as well. I liked to teach for a number
of reasons. It was a challenge to take a complex system and break it down
in meaningful ways that could help pilots out in the day to day operations.
The biggest benefit was that it forced you to intimately know your equipment,
or so you hoped. There is nothing like standing in front of a group
of pilots (or whoever for that matter) and being asked what seems like
such a straight forward question until you open your mouth to answer it.
There is an applicable proverb for moments like that: "Better to keep your
mouth shut and to be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt!"
The line, I don't know, but I'll look it up at lunch. was used a lot.
Come to think of it, I did lose a lot of weight when I was teaching! One funny classroom story
happened once when we were transitioning to a new aircraft type. The Engine
Instructor was explaining in great detail (to impress us?) the inner workings
of this particular new engine. One pilot in our group, unknown to
the instructor, was a former Boeing engineer. He was following very
closely to what was being said and then slowly raised his hand and said
"What you just told us is theoretically impossible". I think the
instructor may have missed lunch that day. Anyway, back to the main
theme. In class we would at times watch video reenactments of events
leading up to aircraft accidents. The video would use the actual
cockpit voice recording from the doomed flight while another flight crew
would act it out in a simulator. Accidents usually are not the result
of one major mistake but the result of a chain of minor miscalculations
and misjudgments. Often if the crew would have caught and corrected
one minor problem, the accident would have most likely been prevented.
Often you could relate to similar situations that you had found yourself
in at one time or another. It was very sobering. To me, the
most chilling accident was caused by a burned out light bulb in the cockpit.
The crew of three became so mentally detached from flying the aircraft
and engrossed in changing the bulb that no on was flying the plane and
it literally flew into the ground and all onboard died. Before crashing,
all three pilots saw and verbally acknowledged that their instruments showed
they were about to crash but none took corrective action because they did
not believe it. No matter how many times I saw that video, chills
always went up my spine as I thought, "They are going to die and don't
know it!" |
