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The moral of this story for me is: be that "another pilot." To be clear, "another pilot" of another aircraft. Not as clear as it could be just like the title of
by tmsh 9y ago
The moral of this story for me is: be that "another pilot." To be clear, "another pilot" of another aircraft. Not as clear as it could be just like the title of this article is ambiguous.
The moral of this story for me is: call out immediately if you see something off. He's the real hero. Even if the ATC controller immediately saw the plane being misaligned at the same time - that feedback confirming another set of eyes on something that is off couldn't have hurt. All 1000 people on the ground needed that feedback. Always speak up in situations like this.
- theGimp 9y agoGood observation. If you're wrong, you suffer a brief moment of embarrassment. If you're right, you might prevent a disaster. Speaking up is a no-brainer.
- bovitclan 9y agoI don't mean to be a downer, but you could certainly cause an accident by calling out an observation which was faulty. I agree with the sentiment that you should speak up when you see something amiss, but let's not kid ourselves that, like every decision, it comes with inherent risk.
- mckoss 9y agoMaking an aircraft go-around can never cause an accident - the missed approach path for any landing aircraft is always kept clear.
- khazhoux 9y agoI wonder how many people have died throughout history due to embarrassment, or (similarly) going against your instinct. The number exists but is unavailable to us. - Not having that dark mole near your privates checked out. - Not wanting to turn the car around. - Not walking away when those shady guys walked in. ...
- avh02 9y agoKorean airlines decades ago had a huge issue with copilots not speaking up to captains when concerned. While not embarrassment - there was a lack of speaking up. IIRC they forced cultural change in order to make it less of an issue. edit: not speaking up
- konschubert 9y agoThe moral might also be that automatic guided landing approaches should be mandatory whenever they are available.
- Piskvorrr 9y agoAnd then your Cat-IIIc equipment is offline for whatever reason, and nobody had landed a plane by hand for years at that point. Now what? (In other words, automation has its own set of failure modes)
- tialaramex 9y agoRight, but a problem with humans is that they tend to seriously over-estimate their capability. So we need to be statistics led on this Given the choice between "One time in a million a human flies the aeroplane into the ground and everybody dies" and "One time in 10 million the computer flies the aeroplane into the ground and everybody dies" we ought to be hard-headed and take the ten times fewer deaths, but we prefer to say "Ah, but _my_ pilots are better than average". Now, the reality gets very complicated, because we ask computers and humans to fly in different conditions. A pilot will refuse to try to land an aeroplane into thick fog, the Cat III ALS is happy to try this because it sees through fog. On the other hand when external circumstances are trying, the pilots may choose not to attempt ALS at all. But despite this complexity, we do need to accept that sometimes a smaller risk of automation error is preferable to the risk of human error even if _neither_ is perfect.
- Piskvorrr 9y agoWe are not in disagreement. My reply was to "why not automate everything?" and indeed the answer is "because sometimes humans are better," not "do not automate anything" :)