6 ms·

As a commercial jet pilot (not airlines, small jets by Cessna), my reaction to much of the coverage in, say, the NYT, was much the same. This was an "ordinary"

As a commercial jet pilot (not airlines, small jets by Cessna), my reaction to much of the coverage in, say, the NYT, was much the same. This was an "ordinary" event from a training perspective, and has a straightforward set of responses - fly the plane, memory items, checklist items (the QRH mentioned), etc. Indeed, as they mention, in a crew environment things are even more calm and responsibilities are (or should be) well defined. I've had an engine failure in cruise flight (on a multi-engine piston plane) in a single-pilot situation. (I later wrote about it in a magazine article.) We train for that too - although not as frequently as airline pilots do who train at least every six months. It was also a non-event from a "what to do". In fact, the only time my single passenger mentioned she was made nervous (after we landed) was when ATC asked for the number of souls on board (which they knew from my IFR flight plan but they always ask). "When did I become a soul???" One thing my best instructor always told me about an emergency: "First, wind your watch." In other words, don't panic and do things hastily and make things worse. Especially in cruise. So, kudos to the flight deck crew for doing exactly what they had trained to do and successfully putting the plane on the ground after dealing with the emergency! Kudos to the rest of the flight crew for what must have been total chaos and fear among the passengers and for doing what I'm sure was their absolute best to save the unfortunate victim. And, in the end, let's all remember that this (seemingly) slightly uncontained engine failure could have been much, much worse and be glad of that. Let's also be thankful that the training airline pilots receive generally have situations that are much less benign than an engine failure in cruise and have it drilled in to them how to handle it.

DrJokepu 9y ago
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t asking for the number of souls is basically asking how many people are (still) alive, as opposed to asking about the number of persons, which would also include deceased people? If someone died during the incident, given that the pilot is not a doctor with the medical authority to decide who’s alive and who isn’t, would that person still be reported as a soul?
- chmod775 9y ago
  I'd wager yes. Because when the rescue team goes in they'll count bodies, living or dead. Doesn't matter if the person died before the plane landed, in a fire that erupted after it landed or made it out alive. You want all of that to add up to some total.
  - gbacon 9y ago
    Airplanes do sometimes transport human remains in caskets and do not contribute to the count of souls on board. FAA Advisory Circular 150/5210-7D (Aircraft Rescue and Fire Fighting Communications)[0], for example, defines souls on board as “total number of passengers and crew.” [0]: https://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/advisory_circular/150-5210-7D/150_5210_7d.pdf https://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/advisory_circular/...
    - isostatic 9y ago
      If the pilot says "50 souls on board", but is also transporting 2 cadavers, and the rescue team finds 50 bodies before giving up, it's possible there'd still be 2 people alive when they gave up.
- MontagFTB 9y ago
  I doubt the pilots’ priorities during the incident is giving a casualty report. I don’t think it helps ATC land the plane any better, either. The number of people on the craft help determine the state the plane is in (weight, crewmanship/passenger ratio, etc.)
  - FireBeyond 9y ago
    Right, but it is useful for "how many EMS personnel might we require".
  - gbacon 9y ago
    When a pilot declares an emergency, ATC requests fuel remaining and souls on board, of which ATC relays the latter to search-and-rescue.
mncharity 9y ago
> much of the coverage "HERO PILOT saves the day by <professionally executing standard emergency procedures>" does seem to have become a news media trope. "Military, and then decades of experience" has been mentioned for decades. But my fuzzy impression is it would be emphasized as it related to specific challenges of the event. That threshold seemed to drop over the years. The bizarre "hero" bit seems more recent, and perhaps increasingly common. Spice for ambulance chasing. At least it raises the societal visibility of female military aviators. And of older women as professionally excellent. I wonder if one might usefully engineer the addition of tropes to news media playbooks. Like "in an example of industry/profession/class groupthink/filterbubble, X said Y". Or "trade agreement section X came from industry Y because Z" - the TPP now vs TPP under US leadership diff would seemingly make for accessible storytelling, but there's been little. > the NYT, was much the same. My lifetime paper, but... the NYT is ok with ambulance chasing. And regrettably ok with sloppy emphasis. Faced with 9/11, setting the tone for the nation, given a menu of options like "stiff upper lip", "carry on", "spirit of Mumbai", and "back to work", we got... something else. Pulitzer-prize-winning ambulance-chasing death fetish? I've wondered, at the time and since, how might the nation have responded, if offered something very vaguely like <diverse 1/3-immigrant new yorkers>: "We are New York - f'em - we can build 'em up faster than the f'ers can knock 'em down"? Oh well - an alternate timeline. I wonder if one could get a "carry on" trope going. Instead of "this passenger is taking it in stride - drat - turn off the camera and seek dramatic emotions elsewhere", perhaps a "person demonstrating a stiff upper lip" could become one additional troped story component. Once one exists, it would be easier for it's relative emphasis to increase with time.
- maxxxxx 9y ago
  I don't like the hero worship either. first time I noticed it was with the firemen during 9/11. Now it seems the media always wants to have a hero for each event. I don't want to diminish the pilots but as far as I know an engine loss is normal procedure and well understood. There are probably dozens of events every day where a truck driver is faced with an exploding tire or other problems that are as difficult or more difficult to handle.
  - 9y ago
ianmcgowan 9y ago
The "first, wind your watch" reminds me of this (possibly) apocryphal story from Debugging by Dave Agans. I think about this when everything is crashing around me, and have a small thrill of recognition. http://kk.org/cooltools/debugging-1/ http://kk.org/cooltools/debugging-1/ has an excerpt: Change One Thing at a Time On nuclear-powered subs, there's a brass bar in front of the control panel for the power plant. When status alarms begin to go off, the engineers are trained to grab the brass bar with both hands and hold on until they've looked at all the dials and indicators, and understand exactly what's going on in the system. What this does is help them overcome the temptation to start "fixing" things, throwing switches and opening valves. These quick fixes confuse the automatic recovery systems, bury the original fault beneath an onslaught of new conditions, and may cause a real, major disasters. It's more effective to remember to do something ("Grab the bar!") tha
- jlgaddis 9y ago
  > It's more effective to remember to do something ("Grab the bar!") tha ... than to remember not to do something ("Don't touch that dial!") So, grab the bar!

DrJokepu 9y ago

Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t asking for the number of souls is basically asking how many people are (still) alive, as opposed to asking about the number of persons, which would also include deceased people? If someone died during the incident, given that the pilot is not a doctor with the medical authority to decide who’s alive and who isn’t, would that person still be reported as a soul?

chmod775 9y ago
I'd wager yes. Because when the rescue team goes in they'll count bodies, living or dead. Doesn't matter if the person died before the plane landed, in a fire that erupted after it landed or made it out alive. You want all of that to add up to some total.
- gbacon 9y ago
  Airplanes do sometimes transport human remains in caskets and do not contribute to the count of souls on board. FAA Advisory Circular 150/5210-7D (Aircraft Rescue and Fire Fighting Communications)[0], for example, defines souls on board as “total number of passengers and crew.” [0]: https://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/advisory_circular/150-5210-7D/150_5210_7d.pdf https://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/advisory_circular/...
  - isostatic 9y ago
    If the pilot says "50 souls on board", but is also transporting 2 cadavers, and the rescue team finds 50 bodies before giving up, it's possible there'd still be 2 people alive when they gave up.
MontagFTB 9y ago
I doubt the pilots’ priorities during the incident is giving a casualty report. I don’t think it helps ATC land the plane any better, either. The number of people on the craft help determine the state the plane is in (weight, crewmanship/passenger ratio, etc.)
- FireBeyond 9y ago
  Right, but it is useful for "how many EMS personnel might we require".
- gbacon 9y ago
  When a pilot declares an emergency, ATC requests fuel remaining and souls on board, of which ATC relays the latter to search-and-rescue.

mncharity 9y ago

> much of the coverage "HERO PILOT saves the day by <professionally executing standard emergency procedures>" does seem to have become a news media trope. "Military, and then decades of experience" has been mentioned for decades. But my fuzzy impression is it would be emphasized as it related to specific challenges of the event. That threshold seemed to drop over the years. The bizarre "hero" bit seems more recent, and perhaps increasingly common. Spice for ambulance chasing. At least it raises the societal visibility of female military aviators. And of older women as professionally excellent. I wonder if one might usefully engineer the addition of tropes to news media playbooks. Like "in an example of industry/profession/class groupthink/filterbubble, X said Y". Or "trade agreement section X came from industry Y because Z" - the TPP now vs TPP under US leadership diff would seemingly make for accessible storytelling, but there's been little. > the NYT, was much the same. My lifetime paper, but... the NYT is ok with ambulance chasing. And regrettably ok with sloppy emphasis. Faced with 9/11, setting the tone for the nation, given a menu of options like "stiff upper lip", "carry on", "spirit of Mumbai", and "back to work", we got... something else. Pulitzer-prize-winning ambulance-chasing death fetish? I've wondered, at the time and since, how might the nation have responded, if offered something very vaguely like <diverse 1/3-immigrant new yorkers>: "We are New York - f'em - we can build 'em up faster than the f'ers can knock 'em down"? Oh well - an alternate timeline. I wonder if one could get a "carry on" trope going. Instead of "this passenger is taking it in stride - drat - turn off the camera and seek dramatic emotions elsewhere", perhaps a "person demonstrating a stiff upper lip" could become one additional troped story component. Once one exists, it would be easier for it's relative emphasis to increase with time.

maxxxxx 9y ago
I don't like the hero worship either. first time I noticed it was with the firemen during 9/11. Now it seems the media always wants to have a hero for each event. I don't want to diminish the pilots but as far as I know an engine loss is normal procedure and well understood. There are probably dozens of events every day where a truck driver is faced with an exploding tire or other problems that are as difficult or more difficult to handle.
- 9y ago

ianmcgowan 9y ago

The "first, wind your watch" reminds me of this (possibly) apocryphal story from Debugging by Dave Agans. I think about this when everything is crashing around me, and have a small thrill of recognition. http://kk.org/cooltools/debugging-1/ http://kk.org/cooltools/debugging-1/ has an excerpt: Change One Thing at a Time On nuclear-powered subs, there's a brass bar in front of the control panel for the power plant. When status alarms begin to go off, the engineers are trained to grab the brass bar with both hands and hold on until they've looked at all the dials and indicators, and understand exactly what's going on in the system. What this does is help them overcome the temptation to start "fixing" things, throwing switches and opening valves. These quick fixes confuse the automatic recovery systems, bury the original fault beneath an onslaught of new conditions, and may cause a real, major disasters. It's more effective to remember to do something ("Grab the bar!") tha

jlgaddis 9y ago
> It's more effective to remember to do something ("Grab the bar!") tha ... than to remember not to do something ("Don't touch that dial!") So, grab the bar!