Captain Sullenberger Hudson

Fly by Wire: The Geese, the Glide, the Miracle on the Hudson

by William Langewiesche  · 10 Nov 2009  · 175pp  · 54,028 words

a safe landing in the Hudson’s frigid waters. The Department of Homeland Security flashed its badges, but only as bureaucracies do. There were no foreign terrorists here. The geese were innocent birds. The captain was the very definition of a good citizen, a man named Chesley Sullenberger whose life until now had

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a short slice of life. PROLOGUE THE INQUEST In June 2009, six months after Chesley Sullenberger struck a flock of Canada geese and glided his wounded US Airways Airbus to a successful ditching into the Hudson River, a public hearing on the case was held in Washington, D.C. It was

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matter for airline pilots, because teamwork and cockpit routines serve well enough. But they had emerged in full force during the glide to the Hudson, during which Sullenberger had ruthlessly shed distractions, including his own fear of death. He had pared down his task to making the right decision about where

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flying job. His performance was a work of extraordinary concentration, which the public misread as coolness under fire. Some soldiers will recognize the distinction. Sullenberger maintained his concentration through the water landing, the evacuation of the airplane, and the brief boat ride to shore. Then a strange thing happened to

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brightest.” His message was that successive generations of pilots willing to work for lower wages might perform less well in flight, and especially during emergencies. Sullenberger seems to believe this, but it is a questionable assertion, since it links financial incentive to individual competence, and ignores the fact that, with

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the profession expecting to see his income cut, particularly when airline executives continue to increase their own compensation, as they have. This is what Sullenberger was legitimately complaining about to Congress. Ever since airline deregulation in the United States in 1978, which did away with route monopolies and noncompetitive pricing

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American airlines have been miserable places to work. Two days after the Hudson River landing, accident investigators interviewed the pilots in New York’s Marriott Downtown hotel, near the site of the former World Trade Center. They started with Sullenberger’s copilot, Jeffrey Skiles, age forty-nine, a man with twenty

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thousand hours of flight time, who had briefly served as the captain of a smallish Fokker twin-jet but had essentially been relegated to the position

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of copilot for his entire career because of successive reductions in the company ranks. Like Sullenberger, Skiles has a mustache. He has an alert, pleasant

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company exerted “external pressure” on the crews. The question, though poorly phrased, was an invitation to expound on the corporate culture of the airline. Sullenberger certainly understood this. In his water-logged bag in the Airbus he had a library book, Just Culture: Balancing Safety and Accountability, about precisely such

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fresh Ph.D. in applied psychology from the University of Central Florida, with a specialization in Crew Resource Management. Sullenberger referred to her as “Dr. Wilson.” She referred to him as “Captain Sullenberger.” She asked him a few technical questions, but for the most part just threw him flowers. “How do you

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stands for “velocity lowest selectable.” There was a moment of silence. The Frenchman probed no further. He said, “Thank you, Captain.” Dr. Wilson echoed his gratitude. She said, “Thank you, Captain Sullenberger.” To Robert Sumwalt, she said, “Mr. Chairman, we have no more questions at this time.” It was the turn now for

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the officially designated parties to ask their own questions. A woman from the flight attendants’ union led off. She suggested to Sullenberger that rather than announcing

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Authority’ portion of the Flight Operations Manual play into the actions on this flight?” Sullenberger answered as if he had been writing a book. He said, “The captain’s authority, or autonomy, the ability to make independent judgments within the framework of professional standards, is critical to aviation safety. It is

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had run multiple simulations of the glide. They knew that the airplane’s flight-control computers had performed remarkably well, seamlessly integrating themselves into Sullenberger’s solutions and intervening assertively at the very end to guarantee a survivable touchdown. The test pilots believed that the airplane’s functioning was a

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going to get through this hearing and be done. Their front man said, “Good morning, Captain Sullenberger, but all of our questions have been answered by Captain Sullenberger, the technical panel, and the other party members. Thank you, sir.” Sullenberger said, “Thank you.” The engine manufacturer had no questions. US Airways had no questions.

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not sure.’ What did you mean by not being sure?” Sullenberger trod carefully here. He said, “I think there are a few situations that can occur where a captain is questioned. And again we must balance accountability with safety. The captain’s authority is a precious commodity that cannot be denigrated. It

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think it is that paying attention matters. That having awareness constantly matters. Continuing to build that mental model to build a team matters.” “Thank you. Captain Sullenberger, I have no further questions. I want to thank you very much for your testimony, for being here this morning, and for representing the piloting

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the Center for Catastrophic Risk Management—a construct that seems to have been designed for the purpose of hunting grants. Maybe the affiliation would help. Sullenberger and Skiles certainly had time for these secondary pursuits, however unexpected in their lives. But on the afternoon of January 12, when they joined

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have to slam it pretty hard.” Apparently the flight attendant slammed the door. Afterward, no terrorist could breeze in unannounced. Referring to the reported weather, Sullenberger said, “Got the newest Charlotte.” The weather there was fine. In the cabin a flight attendant said, “Ladies and gentlemen, all electronic devices have

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crew that happens along—“cleared for takeoff” or “cleared to land.” At LaGuardia it’s not like that. The controllers are virtuoso performers. When Sullenberger and Skiles switched over to the Tower frequency, the Local controller was not only handling inbounds and outbounds on crossing runways, but, for additional sport

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since the airplane’s liftoff. Skiles called for a flap retraction from position two to position one. Sullenberger said, “Flaps one.” They flew in silence for twenty seconds. It was a beautiful day. The Hudson River stretched upstream, below and to the left, on the far side of the Bronx. Looking

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outside, Sullenberger said, “What a view of the Hudson today.” “Yeah.” But Skiles was all business. He said, “Flaps up, please.

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[Do the] after-takeoff checklist.” Sullenberger said, “Flaps up.” The checklist was short. He said, “After-takeoff checklist complete

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plummet toward the earth, as headlines later suggested. Indeed, it descended rather gently. Sullenberger nosed into the glide from a position about 3,000 feet above the city. From that moment until the landing in the Hudson, three minutes and twenty-one seconds passed. The average descent rate, in other words

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, was something less than a thousand feet a minute. There is nothing surprising about this. Sullenberger flew close to the optimal speeds. There was some thrust

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aday descents require significant advance planning and often cannot be performed as decisively as air traffic control desires, particularly when speed reductions are also required. Sullenberger makes the parallel point: that the latest generations of airliners have grown significantly cheaper to fly per passenger mile. This is due largely to

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speaker for business groups (teamwork and resolve) and schools (excitement about aviation). It turned out that Captain Piché was quite a speaker. He returned to flying, however, because, putain, piloting is what he knew best. • Captain Sullenberger, by contrast, hardly ever swears. Furthermore, the closer he gets to airplanes, the more straitlaced

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he becomes. You can hear it in his tone all through his transmissions to New York Approach. He was calm, concentrated, and appropriate. Skiles was equally steady. As Sullenberger put the airplane into

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sight, somewhere behind and to the left, but the airplane was descending through 1,900 feet, and Sullenberger knew he was low. He answered, “We’re unable. We may end up in the Hudson.” Harten did not immediately respond. Such was his mastery of his trade that he had not lost

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refuse to go along. Nonetheless, many professional pilots have resisted the concept of fly-by-wire designs. Pick a date, 1985, five years after Sullenberger left the Air Force. Lockheed had just abandoned the commercial aircraft business, McDonnell Douglas was struggling to get by, and Boeing was the dominant manufacturer

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warnings. After a period of invention, in 1983 it delivered the first A320 of thousands to come. This was the same model that Sullenberger glided toward the Hudson River a quarter century later. Without doubt, it is the most audacious civil airplane since the Wright brothers’ Flyer—a narrow-bodied, twin

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gliding speed with few corrections required. These specific flight characteristics are significantly different from those of conventional airplanes and are helpful to any pilot—even Sullenberger—during an emergency turn. The computers were extracting maximum performance from the wings and constantly adjusting the control surfaces to provide an extraordinarily stable

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platform to fly. As a result, though Sullenberger’s workload was high, he was able to focus almost entirely on more important challenges than basic control. They were still turning. Skiles continued

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or on the ground. You fly it until it stops, and then you evacuate. Sullenberger did not answer Harten’s question. He was still looking for better solutions, but beginning to set up for the Hudson. Talking on the radio is low on the list of chores. You fly the airplane

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first, you navigate second, you talk on the radio after that. Sullenberger was clear about the priorities. His silences were brilliant. Skiles was

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. He said, “[If] no relight after thirty seconds, engine master [switches] one and two confirm…” Harten radioed, “You wanna try to go to Teterboro?” Sullenberger answered, “Yes,” but only because he was considering possibilities. Teterboro is an airport surrounded by city. It was no closer than LaGuardia. They were too

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and slow to get there, and he indicated no move in that direction. They remained over the Hudson, descending. Skiles continued: “… off.” The conflict alert announced: Clear of conflict. Referring to the engine master switches, Sullenberger repeated, “Off.” The restart procedure called for both engines to be switched off simultaneously, and,

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to lose from trying. Skiles switched off the right engine only. Reading from the checklist, he said, “Wait thirty seconds.” Sullenberger made his announcement to the cabin. He said, “This is the captain. Brace for impact.” The flight attendants started shouting, “Brace! Brace! Heads down! Stay down!” Because they could not

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see outside, they did not know that the airplane was over the Hudson and headed for the water. Their ignorance did not matter

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guys. He believed that they and their passengers were about to die. He radioed, “Okay, which runway would you like at Teterboro?” Sullenberger answered, “We’re gonna be in the Hudson.” “I’m sorry, say again, Cactus?” Cactus did not answer. Harten kept after his other duties. He radioed, “Jetlink 2760,

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contact New York Center, [frequency] 126.8.” “Twenty-six eight, Jetlink 2760.” It is almost certain that those pilots kept a radio tuned to the unfolding drama. In their cockpit, Sullenberger

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you still on?” Caution. Terrain. Skiles said, “Hundred and fifty knots… Got flaps two, you want more?” “No, let’s stay at two.” Caution. Terrain. Sullenberger said, “Got any ideas?” Skiles said, “Actually not.” NINE THE FLARE 3:30 p.m. In the annals of jet transport intentional water landings—ditchings

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• Let others speculate about what could have been. What matters is what happened. Back at the moment of the engine failures, even before assuming control, Sullenberger had started the auxiliary power unit—the APU, in the tail, which provides triple-redundant electrical power by driving the airplane’s third generator. There

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to maintain control and avoid stalling. Asseline had the advantage of settling through breakaway branches, with his landing gear extended and his engines producing thrust. Sullenberger had the disadvantage of settling harder, gear up, and coming down onto concrete. When the tail touched the water, the nose was pointed 9.

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were alive. But it was not over yet. In the cabin sat three flight attendants and a hundred and fifty passengers. Outside lay the Hudson in January. Sullenberger called for an immediate evacuation. TEN THE ESCAPE 3:31 p.m. The cabin had twelve first-class and 138 economy-class seats,

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empty. There were limits to how far he could go. The aft galley by then was completely underwater, and the Hudson had risen to the tops of the overwing exits. Sullenberger came forward again, ordered Dail into the right slide raft, and knelt to use the quick-release mechanism and free

The Elements of Choice: Why the Way We Decide Matters

by Eric J. Johnson  · 12 Oct 2021  · 362pp  · 103,087 words

as people read the alerts on their phones. The person next to me exclaimed, “Oh god, there is a US Airways plane down in the Hudson!” Everyone was shaken. We all had the feeling it could have been our plane that went down. As we wandered, stunned, off the jetway, the

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New Yorker, this was especially stunning. If I had been home and not on my flight, I could have watched the aircraft descend into the Hudson from my living room window. Choice architecture is all around us, influencing even the pilots whom we rely on to deliver us safely to our

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. . . . I like to tell our students we’re training them to be decision-makers who happen to know how to fly an airplane.”1 Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger’s decision about where to land the plane was made simply and quickly. There were only 208 seconds, just over three minutes, between the

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emergency landing; flying over a densely populated area across the river to the smaller general aviation airfield at Teterboro; or splashing down in the Hudson. The first thing Sullenberger had to do was make a decision about how he would decide. He did this quickly and automatically, and according to transcripts of

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by the chooser. In other words, the choice architecture of the cockpit controls led Sully to a plausible path that resulted in a good outcome. Sullenberger, in discussing his decision, revealed that he immediately established what was important: So I quickly set priorities, I load shed—pared down this problem to

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me later, “You put a $62 million airliner in the river and they call you a hero. Is this a great country, or what?”2 Sullenberger borrowed the term load shedding from electrical utilities: when demand exceeds their capacity, a utility may take parts of its network off-line, shutting down

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off-line. The way information is displayed to the chooser influences their choice of a plausible path. Lost in the discussion of the bravery of Sullenberger, First Officer Skiles, and the three flight attendants was the role of the cockpit displays. The plane they flew, an Airbus A320, is flown using

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plane in the air expanded his options for landing. Let’s look at the key display that faced Sullenberger, the airspeed tape, shown below. Choice architecture of the airspeed tape4 To fly farther, Sullenberger had to track two quantities: the speed of the plane and the flight angle. By keeping the angle

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The airspeed tape display encourages a pilot to look at particular information. It puts together, on the same gauge, the two most important things that Sullenberger had to track: the speed of the aircraft and the flight angle. The arrow points out where the speed of the plane is heading, relative

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. We might reason that both sets of information are really important and deserve their own meters so they can be easily seen. In addition, because Sullenberger was such an expert, having had about five thousand hours at the controls of the Airbus A320, you might believe that he could easily surmise

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intuitively know how quickly the plane was accelerating or decelerating. But, by doing the calculations for him, the airspeed tape gave Sullenberger valuable extra time to think about other factors. Sullenberger knew the A320’s airspeed tape intimately and reported that he used it frequently during the landing.6 He knew this

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this page depend upon having power that is normally supplied by the plane’s engines. Two seconds after the geese struck Flight 1549’s engines, Sullenberger reached up and turned on the auxiliary power units, keeping the vital indicators functional. This is remarkable: he did it on his own with no

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, instructing pilots to turn on the auxiliary power. Skiles didn’t even have time to complete page 1 before landing. What did the gauge enable Sullenberger to think about, and what did it enable him to ignore? How did it help him load-shed? He says that in the midst of

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everything, he considered the location for a water landing. The Hudson is cold in mid-January. The water temperature was 41 degrees Fahrenheit, and the air a chilly 19 degrees. Hypothermia was a real risk. Even

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if they successfully landed, the plane might float for only a short time. Sullenberger knew that there were many boats along Manhattan’s west side, and a ferry terminal nearby. Because he was able to load-shed, he considered

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, but it is important. If the designer has made the right plausible paths easy, like in the Airbus A320 cockpit, then we can, to use Captain Sullenberger’s term, load-shed. But things do not always turn out that well. Sometimes designers are naive about what plausible paths should be used. Sometimes

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moment. When we make a choice, we don’t always report a strongly held opinion; we partially invent that opinion at that time. Just as Captain Sullenberger faced too much information and needed to load-shed—to concentrate on specific parts of the problem—the respondents in the hamburger experiments had many

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much the products of hundreds of hours of simulation, used to identify good placement and design for controls and displays. Professional pilots, like our friend Captain Sullenberger, can spend hours flying a simulator of the Airbus A320 before qualifying to fly the real thing. A simulator models how the aircraft responds to

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from figure 3 in National Transportation Safety Board, “Loss of Thrust in Both Engines after Encountering a Flock of Birds and Subsequent Ditching on the Hudson River, US Airways Flight 1549 Airbus A320–214, N106US Weehawken, New Jersey, January 15, 2009.” 5. See Langewiesche, “Anatomy of a Miracle”; National Transportation Safety

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in Both Engines after Encountering a Flock of Birds.” The figure and statistics about performance and transcripts come from the NTSB report. 6. In fact, Sullenberger thought he had been right on the green dot speed and above the stall speed throughout the descent. The flight data recorder indicated that he

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Schools, April 25, 2013. National Transportation Safety Board. “Loss of Thrust in Both Engines After Encountering a Flock of Birds and Subsequent Ditching on the Hudson River, US Airways Flight 1549 Airbus A320–214, N106US Weehawken, New Jersey, January 15, 2009” (2010): 1–213. Netflix. “Netflix Quick Guide: How Does Netflix

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path comparison, 35–39, 36 path integration, 35–39, 36 to patience, 33–41 seeing clearly, 52–53 smaller-sooner outcome, 34–35, 37, 39 Sullenberger and Flight 1549, 23–24 use of term, 23, 30 polarization, 323–24 political forecasting, 291–93 Pope, Devin, 68–69 Pope, Jaren, 68–69

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storm tracks, 294–97, 296 straight line metrics, 240–44 “stupid human tricks,” 4 subliminal perception, 300–1 subscription services, 126–27, 267, 314–15 Sullenberger, Chesley “Sully,” 22–29, 44, 102, 332–33n load shedding, 23–24, 27, 28, 44, 61 Sunstein, Cass, 11, 95, 118, 121, 135, 308 supermarket

Air Crashes and Miracle Landings: 60 Narratives

by Christopher Bartlett  · 11 Apr 2010  · 543pp  · 143,135 words

(Everglades, Florida 1996) SWISSAIR-111 ONBOARD FIRE (JFK-Outbound 1998) SUPERSONIC CONCORDE (Paris CDG 2000) CHAPTER 8 PILOT SICK, SUICIDAL, OR INAPPROPRIATE RESPONSE BEA TRIDENT CAPTAIN’S HEART ATTACK (Staines, London 1972) WAS EGYPTAIR FLIGHT 990 SUICIDE? (JFK-Outbound 1999) PILOT SWISHES-OFF AIRBUS TAIL (JFK-Outbound 2001) COLGAN AIR (On

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. There are a number of blogs covering commercial flying. They include Patrick Smith’s aviation blog on salon.com; Just about flying … formerly called Ask Captain Lim on askcaptainlim.com; and Professional Pilots Network on pprune.org. Besides providing much essential material, the official reports by air accident investigative bodies, such

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not so extensive. In a Commendation Ceremony for both the aircrew and cabin crew, BA was happy to bathe in the reflected glory. The captain in question, Captain Eric Moody, subsequently became, and still is, a TV pundit on aviation matters, and a much sought-after after-dinner speaker. In a deftly

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oxygen mask forcing Moody to bring the aircraft down to uncontaminated air where the engines could restart before silting up completely. To be fair, the captain’s calm demeanor and brave words must not only have reassured the passengers, but have helped the crew perform optimally in the circumstances. HIJACKED ETHIOPIAN

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, thus causing it to spin round rather than slowing with both engines breaking off.[19] The situation Captain Leul Abate faced was much more difficult than the one Captain Sully faced on ditching in the Hudson River. 1. Abate was coming down in the sea with a certain swell. 2. He was fighting

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’s La Guardia Airport and ditching in the nearby Hudson River with no fatalities. See photo on back cover of the printed edition. [US Airways Flight 1549] No commercial airline pilot has been quite as sanctified[26] as 58-year-old Captain Chesley B. Sullenberger III (nicknamed Sully) who ditched his Airbus A320

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in New York’s Hudson River without a single loss of life, except for some hapless birds. The fact that he seemed so

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the Cactus 1549’s presumed position—no longer visible on the radar, possibly due to the high buildings. Events in the Air Just before Captain Chesley B. Sullenberger III reported the bird strike and announced his intention to return to La Guardia, the Airbus had been climbing through 3,200 ft under

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sufficient length. Reassuringly, air traffic control informed them Gimli was only 12 nm from their location. As air traffic control guided him towards Gimli, the captain learnt that though it was no longer an operational military base, light aircraft were using the right-hand runway. However, the controller could not guarantee

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to check with Maintenance management to be sure what was permissible. When Pearson arrived at Montreal Airport with First Officer Quintal, they met the incoming captain, Captain Weir, and naturally discussed the condition of the aircraft. Weir said there was a problem with the fuel gauges, and went on to mention the

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solution was to redesign the heat exchanger. Sour Aftertaste As mentioned at the beginning of this narrative, an unjustified whispering campaign at the airline that Captain Burkill had frozen at the controls finally led to him resigning in disgust only to find no other serious airline would employ him. Even though

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just 850 meters to go before crossing the threshold of the slightly shorter of Bangkok Airport’s two parallel runways. The aircrew, consisting of the captain, first officer, who was the pilot actually piloting the aircraft (PF), and second officer, were aware they would encounter difficult conditions since the storms

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occurred, an evacuation without even emergency lighting would have been a nightmare. In the event, waiting for transport avoided injuries and the danger that the captain later mentioned of having considered passengers being struck by aircraft when tempted to ‘walk over the adjacent busy runway towards the brightly lit terminal.’ On

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TCAS in the descending Boeing 747 gave an aural conflict resolution advisory to climb. Notwithstanding the fact that TCAS resolution advisories are mandatory, the 747 captain continued his descent in accordance with the erroneous ATC instruction. Meanwhile, the DC-10 that had continued when the controller attached the wrong flight number

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! It was one of the first ‘jumbos.’ The KLM 747 also supposedly had some fame associated with it, in that a photo of its captain, Dutchman Captain van Zanten, was being used in KLM’s advertising material, including that in the in-flight magazine the passengers must have been perusing during the

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increasing crosswind component. Canceling the departure would mean waiting until the crew had had their mandatory rest, and leaving the next day. That said, the captain did not seem to be overly hurrying things along in order to get away before conditions deteriorated further. He apparently told the catering people, who

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any ‘cultural problems’ regarding their relationship with other crewmembers. This really alluded to the crew being part Malaysian and part Chinese. SIA later dismissed the captain and first officer, after having overtly given all three pilots full support during the course of the inquiry. However, they did not dismiss the third

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. Looking at the feat from a piloting perspective, the main lesson does seem to be the importance of Cockpit Resource Management (CRM), though according to Captain Haynes, it was first called Cockpit Leadership Management. Each person performed his allotted task, and ‘ideas were thrown around.’ With hindsight, one idea, which

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. I’m on the roll. Thank you, sir. The aircraft began its roll, and reached the takeoff decision speed, V1. Captain: V1! The aircraft reached rotation speed, VR . Captain: VR! Captain: ROTATE. The captain announced they had reached the safe takeoff (climb) speed, V2, and then V2 +10 knots, giving them an extra safety

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the event (some audio) did not hasten a resolution. Nobody trusted anybody. Court cases continued, on and off, for some ten years. The various parties—Captain Asseline, the survivors and the injured, Air France, Airbus Industries and even the French Government—fought legal battles and exchanged insults over it. An exasperated

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. [Indian Airlines Flight 605] The Indian Airlines[101] A320 Airbus had taken off from Bombay (Mumbai) with 146 people on board, including two captains in the cockpit. Both captains were experienced, but had comparatively few flying hours on the A320, which with its sophisticated computer systems differed considerably from the aircraft they

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performed badly in stress situations, had been referred for extended basic training in India and had not been certified as passing. As mentioned, the check captain actually flying the aircraft had been found wanting by Indian government officials during tests. Despite this early scare and spat, which led to the temporary

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began recovering small amounts of wreckage, including the vertical stabilizer (tailfin), from the ocean surface. They also retrieved some 50 bodies, including that of the captain. A French submarine and vessels trawling with sideways-scanning detectors began searching for the locating signal of the digital flight data recorders (DFDR) and cockpit

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. ‘A SEMINAL ACCIDENT’ WITH MANY FACETS In his first appearance on CBS News as their new aviation and safety expert, ‘Sully’ Sullenberger famous for safely ditching his aircraft in the Hudson River called this disaster a seminal accident that would be studied for years. He said one needs to look at it

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a thing impossible. Though there was never any agreement on who was right, the NTSB quite recently insisted Airbus incorporate such protections on the A300. Sullenberger, and others, and even the BEA, have mentioned possible improvements, not all really coming under ergonomics: First, there should be a clear indication of the

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be argued. Facet 7 Training The BEA very much exculpates the pilots because Air France had not trained them to cope with such a situation. Sullenberger has pointed out that up until this accident hardly any airline fully trained their pilots to handle high-altitude stalls. Anyway, in the year or

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Officer Madeline (Mimi) Tompkins, at the controls. She had 8,000 hours’ flight experience and hoped soon to be promoted to the rank of captain, like Captain Schornsteimer sitting next to her, also with a similar amount of flying experience. A loud bang behind the pilots signaled the beginning of an explosive

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(CRM) 3. Consideration of all possibilities when something odd happens and taking conservative action if any doubt remains Command responsibility is the tenet that the captain of a ship or aircraft has the ultimate responsibility for ensuring his passengers’ and vessel’s safety, whatever the pressures put on him by management

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not so much to the persons who made it, but to the incompetent administrative airline procedures, which made the mistake possible. In my opinion, neither Captain Collins nor the flight engineers made any error which contributed to the disaster, and were not responsible for its occurrence. The fact that aviation experts

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). [Aeroflot Flight 593] The Aeroflot A310 was on a regular scheduled flight from Moscow to Hong Kong. The three-man flight crew consisted of Captain Danilov (commander), Captain Kudrinsky who was the reserve commander needed for such a long trip, and Second Pilot Piskarev. In addition, there were 65 passengers and 9

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sounds at 17,000 ft. Instruments show an apparent problem with the avionics cooling system—actually due to absence of cooling air. The German-born captain and Cypriot first officer spend five or more minutes discussing problem—with language difficulties—with English maintenance engineer at their base on Cyprus, who says

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horn can be silenced by tripping circuit breaker on panel behind captain’s seat. Captain leaves his seat, but because of the exertion collapses before being able to trip breaker. The last contact with the aircraft was as it

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making repeated circuits. [02:17] While making sixth circuit in the Kea holding pattern, aircraft intercepted by the two Greek F-16 aircraft. They report: Captain not in his seat; first officer slumped over controls; passenger oxygen masks ‘dangling.’ [02:42] Male seen entering the aircraft's cockpit, sitting in the

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AIRLINER (Persian Gulf 1988) Fabulously Expensive Warship versus Ragtag Gunboats A fabulously expensive US warship designed to fight World War III, with a ‘gung-ho’ captain, found itself larking around with Iranian gunboats, and in the process shot down an Iranian airliner on a scheduled flight. The loss of the Pan

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introduced the CHIRP (Confidential Human Factors Incident Reporting) system whereby professional pilots and ATC staff may report in confidence incidents arising from human errors (by captains in particular) for analysis by the RAF Institute of Aviation Medicine at Farnborough. Other countries have similar systems. After World War II, there was a

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electrical power for the computers made the aircraft difficult to handle. Incidentally, he had been hijacked twice before. 5. Captain Sullenberger’s (page 19) ‘perfect’ ditching of his Airbus in New York’s Hudson River after its engines ingested Canadian geese just after takeoff. It was a great achievement based on good judgment

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seemed a miracle to the passengers. It must have been terrifying for all concerned, and is particularly notable for the theatrical style with which the captain reassured the passengers, and no doubt his colleagues as well. We have not included: 1. The skilful landing of the virtually uncontrollable DHL Airbus

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usually competence and clear thinking. Granted some pilots may have to force themselves to stay calm and collected as Captain Sullenberger frankly admitted in an interview following the ditching of his aircraft in the Hudson River. Rather than quibble over the use of the word hero, one should have more qualms about the

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139 British Airtours Flight 28M 139 British Airways Flight 38 52 British Airways Flight 9 9 British European Airways 107 British Midlands Airways 141 Brown, Captain Roy 277 Busby, Michael 138 C C5A 90 Cabin Floor Reinforced for Piano 101 Cactus 1549 19 Canadian Pacific Airlines Flight 402 245 Canadian Pacific

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cliff optical illusion 17 cockpit video recording (amateur) 288 Cockpit Video Recordings 339 cold fusion 140 Cold War 301 Colgan Air Flight 3407 181 Collins, Captain 170 Comair 91 Comair Flight 191 186 Comets 223 Command Responsibility 193, 256 Commercial Aviation Safety xii commuter airlines 181 Comoros Islands 13 compressor stalls

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Saudi Arabian Airlines 135 Saudi King’s 747 138 Saudia Flight 163 135 Scandinavian Airlines Flight 686 & Cessna Citation CJ2 94 scenario fulfillment 91 Schornsteimer, Captain 232 Schreuder, Flight Engineer 78 Schreuder, KLM Flight Engineer 333 seat belt buckle 191 secondary radar 108 Shappell, Scott A. xiii Shootdown 297 SilkAir 89

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stick shake 269 stick shaker 113, 143, 168 Stockholm syndrome 312 Strong, James 63 structural flap 231 suicide 89, 122, 123, 172, 173, 324 Sullenberger III, Captain Chesley B. 19 supersonic airliner 161 swamp 155 Swiss Cheese 59, 325 Swissair 111 158 Swissair Caravelle 282 Swissair Flight 306 282 Swissair Flight SR111

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events. [26] Term used by Robert Kolker in the New York Magazine in a long feature entitled My Aircraft to describe the treatment accorded Captain Chesley B. Sullenberger III (nicknamed Sully) following his feat. The piece also goes into interesting detail as to how, in general, the social and financial standing of

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] Computer Related Incidents with Commercial Aircraft. July 1, 2002. http://www.rvs.uni-ielefeld.de/publications/compendium/ incidents_and_accidents/Ueberlingen2002.html [52] Had the captain himself not been handling the aircraft and concentrating on turning in slippery conditions, he might have been more aware of his location. [53] BA thought

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had considerable difficulty obtaining the information, BA repaired the aircraft and allocated it to a Caribbean route, which they would not name. [54] Traditionally, the captain sits on the left and the first officer (copilot) on the right. This is because holding patterns at airports usually involved left-hand turns and

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Sioux City DC-10 landing. [67] Sioux City Gateway Airport with some might think the unfortunate three-letter code SUX. [68] Slide show presentation by Captain Haynes at the NASA Ames Research Center, Dryden Flight Research Facility, Edwards, California (1991) [69] Just before the touchdown, the first officer is telling Fitch

The Eureka Factor

by John Kounios  · 14 Apr 2015  · 262pp  · 80,257 words

Airport bound for Charlotte, North Carolina. While ascending, the plane struck a flock of birds. Captain Chesley (“Sully”) Sullenberger smelled burning—birds had been sucked into the engines. Then the engines went dead. Within thirty seconds, Captain Sullenberger concluded that the engines couldn’t be restarted. The plane’s altitude was three thousand feet

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couldn’t quite make could well be catastrophic to everyone on board, and persons on the ground. And my next thought was to consider Teterboro,” Sullenberger later said in an interview. But then he judged that Teterboro Airport was also too far away. How did he exclude all these possibilities

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? Sullenberger explained: It wasn’t so much calculating as it was being acutely aware, based upon our energy state and by visually assessing the situation, of

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that neither [airport] was a viable option. Thus, within one minute, he concluded that only one chance remained: to try for a landing in the Hudson River. He didn’t methodically reason through all the possibilities. His expertise enabled him to be “acutely aware” of both the viable options and the

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dead ends. Sullenberger also knew that only a handful of pilots had ever been able to safely accomplish what he was about to attempt. How could he do

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the bird strike, flight 1549, with its complement of 155 passengers and crew members, landed safely in the Hudson River. All were saved. Why did Captain Sullenberger succeed where virtually all pilots had previously failed? Sullenberger learned to fly at sixteen. When he enrolled in the U.S. Air Force Academy, he received glider

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, started his own flight-safety consulting business, and continued his involvement in accident investigations for the air force and the National Transportation Safety Board. But Sullenberger himself had the most succinct explanation for his heroic, virtuoso performance: “One way of looking at this might be that for forty-two years, I

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in this bank of experience: education and training. And on January 15 the balance was sufficient so that I could make a very large withdrawal.” Captain Sullenberger didn’t have an aha moment. He thought within the box—a magnificent box that he had painstakingly constructed over the course of forty-plus

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Larsen’s approach to playing chess, see query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9403E0DD1638F931A2575AC0A9669D8B63. Quick Think 1 The information about, and quotes from, Captain Chesley Sullenberger are derived from www.airspacemag.com/flight-today/Sullys-Tale.html/; www.cbsnews.com/news/flight-1549-a-routine-takeoff-turns-ugly/; and Wikipedia, s

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.v. “Chesley Sullenberger,” last modified June 26, 2014, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sullenberger. CHAPTER 4: ALL OF A SUDDEN … * * * 1 The idea that creativity does not differ from “ordinary” thought is discussed in

Cockpit Confidential: Everything You Need to Know About Air Travel: Questions, Answers, and Reflections

by Patrick Smith  · 6 May 2013  · 309pp  · 100,573 words

: those mysterious airport codes 4. Flying for a Living: The Awe and Odd of a Life Aloft The Right Seat: Propellers, Polyester, and Other Memories Captain, copilot, first officer? Who are these people? • Becoming an airline pilot • Training: everything you need to know • Pilot salaries, truth and fiction • The seniority

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system blues • Pilot shortage: the real story • A pilot’s schedule, and the cross-country shuffle • This is your captain sleeping: the menace of fatigue • Regional pilots: are they safe? • Women and minorities • The truth about cockpit automation • How passengers can (or can’t)

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gauge a pilot’s skill • Captain Sully: heroics or hype? • Pilots and alcohol • Those fancy watches and mysterious black bags • Cockpit cuisine: first class fare and ramen noodles • Flying naked? • Globetrodden

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the slightest jolt or burble. In some respects, this is another example of American overprotectiveness, but there are legitimate liability concerns. The last thing a captain wants is the FAA breathing down his neck for not having the sign on when somebody breaks an ankle and sues. Unfortunately, there’s a

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be hazardous for takeoff or landing. Over the Atlantic in a 747, we heard a loud bang, followed by a vibration through the cabin. The captain informed us we’d suffered an engine stall. This would have been a “compressor stall,” a phenomenon where airflow through the engine is temporarily disrupted

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and everywhere at once. I could feel my ears popping, and sure enough, a glance at the instruments showed we were quickly losing pressurization. The captain and I put our masks on, took out the book, and began to troubleshoot. Part of that troubleshooting involved one of those steep descents. Commencing

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flight plan, upping the total accordingly. If traffic delays are expected, even more will be added. And although dispatchers and planners devise the figures, the captain has the final say and can request more still. Carrying surplus fuel costs money, but not nearly as much as the hassles of diverting. The

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Maryland. Afterward, the FAA enforced several protective measures, including fuel tank modifications and the installation of discharge wicks aboard all aircraft. In 1993, I was captaining a thirty-seven-seater when lightning from a tiny embedded cumulonimbus cell got us on the nose. What we felt and heard was little more

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designated briefing room before heading to the aircraft; otherwise it happens on the jet prior to boarding. It starts with an exchange of names. The captain then speaks for three or four minutes, going over the flight time, anticipated turbulence, arrival weather, and anything else pertinent or peculiar. Long-haul

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NASA. We shouldn’t give dispatchers short shrift; their job is a critical one. Officially, responsibility for a flight is shared fifty-fifty between the captain and the dispatcher. From pushback to touchdown, a flight remains in constant contact with its dispatcher via radio or datalink. And maybe you’re wondering

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ground falls away; the plane banks sharply. You grip the armrest. What the heck is happening? A long minute later, the PA crackles and the captain speaks. “As you’re aware,” he says, “we had to abandon our approach and make another circuit. We’re circling back around for another

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not flying is still plenty busy with a long list of chores: communicating, programming the FMS and navigational equipment, reading checklists, and so forth. The captain has ultimate authority over the flight, and a larger salary to go with it, but he may not be the one physically steering the plane

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first officer. His job is the management of a multitude of onboard systems—electrical, hydraulic, fuel, pressurization, and others—as well as backing up the captain and first officer. If you’re wondering about the navigator, that’s a job description that hasn’t existed on western-built planes since the

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various drills, or it might follow the real-time pattern of an actual flight, gate to gate, complete with paperwork, radio calls, and so on. Captains and first officers training together are tested both individually and as a working team. Behind them sits a merciless instructor whose job it is to

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for what we call IOE, or “initial operating experience.” This is a series of revenue flights completed under the guidance and tutelage of a training captain. There are no warm-ups; your very first takeoff will be with a load of paying passengers seated behind you. Those assigned to international routes

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or regions that are especially challenging. Parts of South America, for example, or Africa. For first officers, this is usually self-study, though for captains it entails flying there in the company of a training pilot before being allowed to do so on their own. And finally it’s over

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cockpit of an Airbus A320, I’d be hard pressed to get an engine started. Transitioning to another model, or upgrading from first officer to captain of the same model, pilots undergo a complete training regimen. Even if you’ve previously checked out on a particular plane, you’ll sweat

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love to make examples of during contract negotiations. In truth, a very small portion of all pilots out there make this much—the gray-haired captains nearing retirement, on the highest rungs of a major carrier’s seniority ladder. Seldom do you hear about the pilots making thirty, forty, or

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at the regionals, where the pay is considerably lower. A junior copilot on a RJ might earn as little as $19,000 a year. Senior captains top out around $100,000. Readers should be cautious of sources citing “average” pilot salaries. Those averages might pertain only to certain sectors of

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into buildings, is still a good one. How are pilots evaluated for raises or promotions? Who and what determines when a first officer becomes a captain? This, and several questions that follow, require an understanding of the airline seniority system. In the United States and many other countries, all of

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effectively meaningless. Seniority is the currency of value. Nothing is more important than, as we call it, our “number.” We bid our preferences for position (captain or first officer), aircraft type, base city, monthly schedule, vacations, and so on. What we’re ultimately assigned comes down to our relative position within

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number within the airline overall; our number in a particular base; our number within a specific aircraft category; our number, number, number. First officers become captains only when a slot becomes available, and only when seniority permits them to. How talented you are, or how swell a person you are, will

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probationary pay and benefits, regardless of experience. The long, slow climb begins again. This is industry standard, and there are no exceptions—not for Chesley Sullenberger, not for a former NASA astronaut, not for anybody. When the pilots of Eastern, Braniff, Pan Am, and a hundred other belly-up carriers suddenly

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one: start over as a rookie, as it were, or find another career. If business is bad and airlines are contracting, seniority moves in reverse: captains become first officers; and junior first officers become cab drivers. In the rickety profit/loss roller coaster that is the airline industry, layoffs—furloughs, as

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). For cabin staff it works the same way. A senior flight attendant might grab the same coveted layovers in Athens or Singapore that a senior captain does. There are, however, fewer duty-time restrictions and contractual protections for flight attendants, and they tend to work more days. A pilot might

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the so-called Miracle on the Hudson? Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger was the US Airways captain who guided his suddenly engineless Airbus into the Hudson River on January 15, 2009, after striking a flock of Canada geese. Together with the majority of my colleagues, I have the utmost respect for Captain Sullenberger. But that’s just it

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adequately acknowledged. Specifically, the time and place where things went wrong. As it happened, it was daylight and the weather was reasonably good; there off Sullenberger’s left side was a 12-mile runway of smoothly flowing river, within swimming distance of the country’s largest city and its flotilla of

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more inclement weather conditions, the result was going to be an all-out catastrophe, and no amount of talent or skill was going to matter. Sullenberger, to his credit, has been duly humble, acknowledging the points I make above. People pooh-pooh this as false modesty or self-effacing charm,

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didn’t see heroics; I saw professional execution in the throes of an emergency. And if we’re going to lavish praise on men like Sullenberger, who did not perish, what of the others like him whose stories you’ve likely never heard, mainly because their planes didn’t come splashing

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down alongside the world’s media capital? I give you Captain Brian Witcher and his crew aboard United Airlines flight 854, a 767 flying from Buenos Aires to Miami in April 2004. They never made

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fast, including all radios and navigational equipment, they managed a successful emergency landing in mountain-ringed Bogotá, Colombia. Or consider the predicament facing American Eagle Captain Barry Gottshall and first officer Wesley Greene three months earlier. Moments after takeoff from Bangor, Maine, their Embraer regional jet suffered a freak system failure

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to be a safety issue. Can a pilot grounded for drinking ever fly again? Among the most inspirational stories out there is that of Northwest captain Lyle Prouse, one of the trio arrested that morning in Minnesota in 1990. Prouse, an alcoholic whose parents had died of the disease, became

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superheated haze had settled over O’Hare, pushing the temperature to 107 degrees. I was up front, finishing my preflight checks and waiting for the captain. I was so hot that I could hardly move. So I took my shirt and tie off. Pilot shirts, which are mostly polyester, are

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uncomfortable enough even in a perfect climate. Crank the heat and it’s like wearing chain mail. I also removed my shoes. The captain arrived—a large, slow-moving fellow in his fifties who I’d never met before. He stepped into the cockpit and discovered his first officer

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radio. There’s something in the crackle and echo of an HF transmission that intensifies a sense of distance and isolation. “Gander, Gander,” calls the captain. “DHL zero one one, position. Five eight north, three zero west at zero five zero four. Flight level three six zero. Estimate five eight

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ourselves in a watery grave, we’d save everyone the trouble by spreading a veritable slick of tulips halfway to Labrador. Making matters worse, the captain takes out a chart and starts playing with the GPS. “Ha!” he shouts. Bored and curious, he has plotted the exact latitude and longitude

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“Airbus series aircraft, from the A320 through the much larger A380, do provide a way for pilots to vary airflow,” says Dave English, an A320 captain and aviation writer. “But not in the way characterized by The Economist.” English explains that the Airbus controllers have three positions, labeled HI, NORM, and

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much all carriers, however, have a policy that allows crews to start the APU if conditions become uncomfortable. Despite the emphasis on saving fuel, no captain would be penalized for using the APU to cool down an overheated cabin (or warming up a cold one). So why do passengers find themselves

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am not aware of a passenger ever being sucked through a ruptured cabin window. I can, however, vouch for the story of a British Airways captain who was partially ejected through a blown-out cockpit pane. He survived with minor injuries. Looking out the window, I often notice a circular halo

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to Lebanon, Algeria, and back again. At one point passengers were removed, split into groups, and held captive in downtown Beirut. The photograph of TWA Captain John Testrake, his head out the cockpit window, collared by a gun-wielding terrorist, was broadcast worldwide and became an unforgettable icon of the siege

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with no legitimate bearing on safety. Being blunt about every little problem invites unnecessary worry, not to mention embellishment. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is the captain. Just to let you know, we’ve received a failure indication for the backup loop of the smoke detection system in the aft cargo compartment

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is never faulted for boasting that its crews receive the best training possible; the preflight demo rambles imperatively of seat belts and oxygen masks; the captain reminds you that nothing is more important than the well-being of everybody on board. But these are not mass-market pitches. Protocol permits any

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many other countries pilots have been arrested and put on criminal trial for their professional mistakes. One prominent case involved manslaughter charges brought against the captain of a turboprop that crashed in New Zealand in 1995. In 2000, three pilots of a Singapore Airlines 747 were taken into police custody in

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from gate 25 at Logan’s terminal B and begin to taxi. About halfway to Florida, we started descending. Because of a “security issue,” our captain told us, we, along with many other airplanes, would be diverting immediately. Pilots are polished pros when it comes to dishing out euphemisms, and this

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for its part, is the oldest continuously operating airline in the world, founded in 1919 and highly regarded for its safety and punctuality. The KLM captain, Jacob Van Zanten, whose errant takeoff roll will soon kill nearly six hundred people, including himself, is the airline’s top 747 instructor pilot and

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. The airport has no ground tracking radar. KLM taxis ahead and onto the runway, with the Pan Am Clipper ambling several hundred yards behind. Captain Van Zanten will steer to the end, turn around, then hold in position until authorized for takeoff. Pan Am’s instructions are to turn clear

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delayed often has limited understanding of what the problem actually is. And the various personnel can be mighty territorial. Several years ago I was the captain of a commuter plane victimized by a snowstorm. Our twenty or so passengers were confused, and the gate staff did little to make things clear

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public relations disasters were symptomatic of, among other problems, airlines’ general reluctance to think outside the box, and a failure to adequately empower their employees—captains, station managers, and others in the chain of command—to make critical operational decisions. Get a stairway. Get a bus. Let people deplane on the

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and is fully qualified to operate the aircraft in all stages of flight, including takeoffs and landings, and does so in alternating turns with the captain (see pilots and copilots). Flight level Example: “We’ve now reached our cruising altitude of flight level three-three-zero. I’ll go ahead

The Digital Doctor: Hope, Hype, and Harm at the Dawn of Medicine’s Computer Age

by Robert Wachter  · 7 Apr 2015  · 309pp  · 114,984 words

healthcare will be realized only if it augments, but does not replace, the human touch.” —Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger speaker; consultant; author of Highest Duty and Making a Difference; pilot of US Airways 1549, the “Miracle on the Hudson” “With vivid stories and sharp analysis, Wachter exposes the good, the bad, and the

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- monitoring narcissist,” Smith said. “Not an average human patient.” At the end of my visit to IBM’s research headquarters in New York’s lovely Hudson Valley (the place where the machine that beat the Jeopardy champions was built), a few members of the Watson team told me about those thrilling

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, often confusing, high-stakes environment, nor the only one that has to grapple with the matter of computerized alerts. I spoke to Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, the famed “Miracle on the Hudson” pilot, about how aviation handles the matter of alerts. “The warnings in cockpits now are prioritized so you don’t get

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should not. Blind trust is the enemy; the goal is to develop appropriately calibrated trust. This issue is not just a struggle in healthcare. As Captain Sullenberger told me, aviation faces a similar need to balance trust in the machine and human instinct. The fact that today’s cockpit technology is so

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18, 2014. 146 “Missing a real event is much more costly” Quoted in L. Kowalczyk, “Patient Alarms Often Unheard.” 147 I spoke to Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger Interview of Sullenberger by the author, May 12, 2014. 147 So I spent a day in Seattle with several of the Boeing engineers Interviews of Bob

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, July 16, 2014. 269 In a 2012 video discussing what healthcare can learn Boeing checklist video, Boeing Corp., 2012, intranet. 270 As Captain Sullenberger told me Interview of Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger by the author, May 12, 2014. Chapter 29: Art and Science 271 “The more questioningly we ponder” M. Heidegger, The Question Concerning

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standards, 13 See also Meaningful Use Sterile Cockpit, 83 stethoscopes, 32, 33 Stoller, James, 77 Stop the Line, 161 Strangers at the Bedside (Rothman), 30 Sullenberger, Chesley “Sully”, 147, 270 supervised learning, 112 Swiss cheese model, 131–132 Sydenham, Thomas, 31 Szolovits, Peter, 100–101, 110, 112 Tecco, Halle, 238–239

The Crash Detectives: Investigating the World's Most Mysterious Air Disasters

by Christine Negroni  · 26 Sep 2016  · 269pp  · 74,955 words

contributes insight, analysis, and advocacy on the subjects of safety and civility in air travel. PENGUIN BOOKS An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC 375 Hudson Street New York, New York 10014 penguin.com Copyright © 2016 by Christine Negroni Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free

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bad weather as the Martin 130 flying boat approached the Philippine archipelago. The plane was “sandwiched between two layers of clouds,” explained Pete Frey, a captain with a large American carrier and a safety investigator with his union, who reviewed for me the weather reports submitted by the crew on that

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the Malaysia 370 mystery, I thought of these episodes. After all, it was an ordinary flight—under the command of an experienced and well-regarded captain—that suddenly turned baffling. The Boeing 777 departed Kuala Lumpur International Airport on March 8, 2014, on an overnight trip to Beijing. There were 227

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thousand flight hours. As a point of reference, that’s just fifteen hundred hours fewer than Chesley Sullenberger had in his logbook when he successfully ditched a disabled US Airways airliner into New York’s Hudson River, and Zaharie was five years younger than Sully. Zaharie spent even more untallied time flying

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Trent 892 engines. Around the time the ACARS message was being sent, it appears control of the flight was transferred to the first officer because Captain Zaharie was now making the radio calls. He confirmed to air traffic control that the plane was flying at cruise altitude. “Ehhh . . . Seven Three

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and the sound of an alarm in the background. In what seems like farcical overenunciation that makes a lot of sense to me now, the captain explained to the controller that he was “Unable . . . to . . . control altitude. Unable . . . to . . . control . . . airspeed. Unable . . . to . . . control heading.” He added, “Other than that,

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landed and the few that crashed, bring home with chilling clarity that physical exertion eats away at the too-few seconds of useful consciousness. The captain was unable to regain command of the airplane. If he had, things might have turned out very differently. Incomprehensible On the flight deck, Fariq

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newspaper. In his unexpected exit through the cockpit window, Lancaster had kicked off the autopilot. While another flight attendant raced in to help keep the captain from disappearing, First Officer Alistair Atcheson regained control of the airplane, and then prepared for an emergency landing, which he accomplished just eighteen minutes later

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it lost electrical power. The autothrottle, autopilot, weather radar, and many other systems, including the automatic control for the pressurization system, simply stopped. Only the captain’s flight display worked, albeit in “degraded mode.” The plane landed safely, but once it was on the ground, its doors could not be opened

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the Pacific to Manila, a five-day journey with overnight stays in island hotels built and operated by the airline. The crew consisted of a captain, four copilots, a flight engineer, a radio operator, a navigator, and a pilot studying basic navigation from him. Navigation was by celestial observation combined

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In his book Disasters in the Air, Jan Bartelski weighs the theories and suggests one of his own. A nearly undamaged instrument panel from the captain’s position was found in the wreckage, and the static line to the altimeter was disconnected. In their report, the Rhodesian investigators discounted the significance

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stops in trying to uncover every detail of an accident with such a high toll unless the truth threatened some great scandal? When Eastern Airlines captain George Jehn first delved into the controversy over the Arrow Air disaster, he was stunned by the similarities with an accident earlier that same year

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was not much opportunity for pilots to gain experience in this unusual environment. Of the eleven flights between February 1977 and November 1979, only one captain had flown to Antarctica more than once. It was considered a plum assignment. Management pilots handled most trips, often with VIP guests of Air New

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simple as it was unintentional. Rather than confess, however, the people at Air New Zealand decided to hide the truth by incriminating the pilots. When Captain Collins made the decision to descend from sixteen thousand to six thousand feet to give his passengers a better view of Antarctica, he was confident

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the twelve-thousand-foot volcano. Even though this made for a very different flight path, the crew was not notified of the change. Neither the captain nor the first officers would have noticed the difference just looking at the numbers, which are latitude and longitude coordinates for a series of waypoints

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the crash site reveal that the plane was flying at around fifteen hundred feet when the first alert sounded with Terrain pull up! Seconds later, Captain Collins instructed the first officer, “Go-around power, please.” The recording ends six seconds after the initial warning. There were two big questions for

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fatal descent. Accompanying Chippindale for the ten days of on-site investigation was the chief pilot of Air New Zealand, Ian Gemmell. Unlike Chippindale, however, Captain Gemmell knew about the change in flight path, because flight dispatcher David Greenwood had told him. Gemmell was by Chippindale’s side throughout the investigation

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at the crash scene recovering bodies, two New Zealand police identification officers, Stuart Leighton and Greg Gilpin, found the ring binder not far from where Captain Collins’s body lay. The binder had about thirty pages, mostly blank, except for a few in the front, which contained numbers. Sergeant Gilpin

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information. When the binder arrived in New Zealand, however, those pages were gone. No one could satisfactorily explain what happened until 2012. On his deathbed, Captain Gemmell told documentarian Charlotte Purdy that the airline had removed the pages. Purdy, whose uncle was the flight engineer on Flight 901, was producing the

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report concluded that the pilots were flying in cloud and that descent was foolhardy. The CAD’s chief, E. T. Kippenberger, had a theory that “Captain Collins must have been suddenly afflicted by some medical or psychological malady, which made him oblivious to danger looming in front of him.” Ultimately, a

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flight deck of the airplane with the registration G-ALYV. When the last of the Comet’s passengers was seated, the plane departed. After takeoff, Captain Haddon confirmed clearance to climb to thirty-two thousand feet. That was the last message transmitted. Arriving at the hotel, Foote heard the news that

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the navy jacket with the gold braid; it’s his confidence, his completely unselfconscious “you’re safe in my hands, baby” attitude. Pete the airline captain is all authority and competence. Around the world, tens of thousands of airline pilots make a similar transformation. That harried blonde in line at Starbucks

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that the operation of the airline was not relevant. The accident, it stated, had been “caused by poor fuel planning, poor decision-making” by the captain. Two years before the Pel-Air mess, George Snyder wrote in an article for the Flight Safety Foundation’s AeroSafety World magazine, “The assignment of

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the head of CASA, John McCormick, did not share them with the accident investigators because the ditching, he said, “was entirely the fault of the captain.” Captain James admits he made mistakes, but adds that none of the support that would have helped him do his job was there. “I didn’t

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a reflection on the overall design of the system that he is tasked with operating.” The Prevention System There’s a story about an airline captain who, having landed at the airport and parked the jet at the gate, announced to the departing passengers, “Welcome to your destination, ladies and

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it was just a bad bulb when Stockstill noticed the plane’s descent. “We did something to the altitude,” the first officer said. “What?” said Captain Loft. “We’re still at two thousand, right?” Loft’s final words showed his confusion: “Hey, what’s happening here?” Flight 401 smashed into

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asked questions. Part of CRM training is to create an environment that, when [the junior pilot] has information that’s critical to the flight, the captain will listen,” Wickens said. Drawing a parallel to how rank is disregarded in safety-critical situations in the military, Wickens explained, “Landing on aircraft carriers

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in the right seat. After the accident, Lee Kang-guk told investigators that he delayed initiating a go-around because he thought “only the instructor captain had the authority.” How open pilots are to asserting themselves, pointing out the errors of superiors, or acknowledging their own fallibility is highly influenced by

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the Journal of Air Transportation in 2000, Michael Engle wrote that “there were extreme cultural differences” about whether “junior crewmembers should question the actions of captains” depending on where in the world they were from. Forty years after the push to improve cockpit interaction and imbue the entire flight crew with

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In the early days of flight, the cockpit was a busy and crowded place. The crew complement on the Hawaii Clipper in 1938 consisted of captain, first officer, second officer, third officer, fourth officer, engineer, assistant engineer, and radio operator—eight people required to fly six passengers. Each new generation

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he did not notice that the autopilot had disconnected and the plane was in danger of stalling. After losing four thousand feet of altitude, the captain was able to recover control of the airplane. When Flight 188 made headlines, then-FAA administrator Randy Babbitt got on the evening news and

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automation reduces a workload too much, vigilance suffers. “Boredom produces negative effects on morale, performance, and quality of work,” she found. Now an air force captain at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, Mastracchio is a pilot on the sixty-year-old, eight-engine B-52 Stratofortress, and automation is

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pilots who had knowingly broken the last link in the chain to calamity. Three and a half years later, Chesley Sullenberger and Jeff Skiles ditched an Airbus A320 in New York’s Hudson River after geese flew into the engines following takeoff from LaGuardia Airport. In September 2010, Andrei Lamanov and Yevgeny

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from failure; what can be gleaned from studying the right stuff? This is not just Reason’s question. From the icy day Sullenberger and Skiles ditched their plane in the Hudson, the public has clamored to hear their story. The same is true of the heroes who preceded them. The controlled crash

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request to ATC to climb to ten thousand feet. “I wanted enough altitude so we could glide back to Changi,” he reasoned. Nine months earlier, Captain Sullenberger found himself in a similar situation with even less altitude. He was at three thousand feet following takeoff from New York’s LaGuardia Airport when

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geese flew into the engines, knocking them out. The A320 began a one-thousand-feet-per-minute descent. In his book Highest Duty, Sullenberger said he and Skiles knew in less than a minute that they were not going to get to any of the nearby airports. “We were

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too low, too slow, too far away and pointed in the wrong direction,” he wrote. The Hudson River was “long enough, wide enough and on that day, smooth enough to land a jetliner.” So he did. Worrying about whether the Qantas A380

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a 550-ton glider, de Crespigny calculated just how much altitude he would need to get back to Changi Airport. He wasn’t thinking about Sullenberger, he was thinking about the astronaut Neil Armstrong, remembering that when Armstrong was a test pilot flying the X-15 at NASA in the 1960s

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weaknesses in maintenance, training, or operational procedures. “Even with a good outcome, every part of the story isn’t perfect,” said Billy Nolen, a former captain with American Airlines and now senior vice president of safety for the U.S. airline trade association Airlines for America. Reviewing large numbers of flights

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share their expertise enable an atmosphere where pilots routinely save the day. “The most influential thing in my life has been working with other great captains,” Tangeman told me. “Nothing replaces great mentoring.” At a time, and in an industry, in which automation is preferable to the human touch, humanity’

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Manila; it has never been found. | (Photo courtesy Pan Am Historical Foundation) The Cuban pilot’s license issued to Leo Terletsky in 1930. He was captain of the ill-fated Hawaii Clipper. | (Pan Am Historical Foundation / courtesy University of Miami) The tail assembly of Helios Flight 522 rests on a hillside

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Hatfield) At the Royal Aircraft Establishment in Farnborough, England, workers test a Comet fuselage in a water-filled tank. | (Photo courtesy British Aerospace Hatfield) The captain of ANA Flight 692 addresses passengers after the emergency evacuation of the 787. | (Photo courtesy of passenger Kenichi Kawamura) ANA Flight 692 on the tarmac

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of Norfolk Island, Australia, photographed where it lay on the floor of the Pacific Ocean in 2009. | (ATSB Photo) An artist’s depiction of KLM captain Jacob van Zanten’s attempted takeoff over the Pan Am 747 still taxiing on the runway. | (Creative Commons) Adam Jiggins, a student at CTC Aviation

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London: Virgin Books, 2006. Kohli, S. Into Oblivion: Understanding #MH370. CreateSpace, 2014. Langewiesche, W. Fly by Wire: The Geese, The Glide, The Miracle on the Hudson. London: Picador, 2010. Levine, S. The Powerhouse: Inside the Invention of a Battery to Save the World. New York: Viking, 2015. Lindbergh, C. A. Of

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, D. Malaysia Airlines Flight 370: Why it Disappeared—and Why It’s Only a Matter of Time Before This Happens Again. New York: Skyhorse, 2015. Sullenberger, C. with J. Zaslow. Highest Duty: My Search for What Really Matters. New York: William Morrow, 2009. U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Aviation

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Charles, 70, 74 Hill, Ployer P., 210 Hillary, Edmund, 120 Hirata, Koichi, 181–82 Holst, Kim, 234 Hoover, J. Edgar, 71 Howland Island, 68, 70 Hudson River water landing, 18, 236 Huerta, Michael, 182 Hughes, Howard, 144 The Human Contribution (Reason), 237 “human factors,” 206, 209, 211, 216, 220, 237, 246

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115 Strand, Laura, 258 Strange Encounters: Mysteries of the Air (Beaty), 138 Stroessner, Alfredo, 109 Stromboli, 155–57 structural failures, 42, 149–53, 155–56 Sullenberger, Chesley, 18, 236–38, 247 Sumwalt, Robert, 227 Sunderland flying boat, 75 supplemental oxygen systems, 8–12, 14–15, 30, 32–34, 36–42 Swissair

When to Rob a Bank: ...And 131 More Warped Suggestions and Well-Intended Rants

by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner  · 4 May 2015  · 306pp  · 85,836 words

if you can capture that value for your own benefit. Maybe I will write more about that tomorrow™. What Captain Sullenberger Meant to Say (But Was Too Polite to Do So) (BY “CAPTAIN STEVE”) Captain Steve is a seasoned international pilot for a major U.S. carrier and a friend of Freakonomics. (Given the

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the “The Miracle on the Hudson,” in which Captain Chesley Sullenberger safely landed an Airbus A320-200 in the Hudson River. Both the plane’s engines had failed, due to a bird strike, shortly after takeoff from LaGuardia Airport in New York. After reading some of the excerpts of Captain Sullenberger’s various speeches, especially those

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of a few weeks ago with the National Transportation Safety Board, I would like to add my editorial. Captain Sullenberger has been a class act all the way. He’s not been petty

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, pious, or egotistical. He is, however, like most of the captains I know and, more broadly, most of the pilots I know. Why? He

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has taken years, even decades, to prepare himself for that one single “lifetime event” of guiding his jet into the safe, smooth landing on the Hudson River. What he is not saying is this: We, the airline pilots, are facing a losing battle in the PR department. You believe that we

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from the seasoned pilots about the real world of flying into the O’Hares and LaGuardias. They learned decision making, delegation, and the reality of “captain’s final authority” as confirmed in the law. When they got the chance to upgrade, they became a copilot. The copilot’s duty was to

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assist the captain in flying; but even during their time as the new copilot, they had the luxury of the FE looking over their shoulders—i.e., more

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had more freedom and better pay as pirates than as merchantmen. But perhaps the most important thing was freedom from the arbitrariness of captains and the malicious abuses of power that merchant captains were known to inflict on their crews. In a pirate democracy, a crew could, and routinely did, depose their

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captain if he was abusing his power or was incompetent. Q. You write that pirates weren’t necessarily the bloodthirsty fiends we imagine them to have

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over the years, from Q&As to Quorums to occasional essays. We are especially indebted to the awesome cadre of regular contributors, including: Ian Ayres, Captain Steve, Dan Hamermesh, Dean Karlan, Andrew Lo, Sanjoy Mahajan, James McWilliams, Eric Morris, Nathan Myhrvold, Jessica Nagy, Kal Raustiala, Seth Roberts, Steve Sexton, Fred Shapiro

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, Chris Sprigman, Sudhir Venkatesh, and Justin Wolfers. Special thanks to Captain Steve, James, and Sudhir for letting us put some of their posts in this book. One component of the blog—one of the best components

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Burress, Plaxico, 216, 239, 240–41 bus, boarding, 143–46 Bush, George W., 51, 108, 136 Caesars Entertainment, 126–27 Caesar’s Palace, 189–91 “Captain Steve,” 82–86 Carnegie, Andrew, 16 carnivores, 179–84 cars: child safety seats, 103–6 conspicuous consumption, 184–85 incivility in driving, 161–64 prices

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, capitalization of, 67 strangers, fear of, 130–33 street gangs, 229–36, 246–47, 248–49 street handouts, 328–37 Stubbs, Bob, 46 subjectivity, 170 Sullenberger, Chesley “Sully,” 82–83 SuperFreakonomics (Levitt & Dubner), 54, 101, 105, 119, 121, 261 supply and demand, 78–80, 110, 112, 115, 128, 341–44 Swift

Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World

by General Stanley McChrystal, Tantum Collins, David Silverman and Chris Fussell  · 11 May 2015  · 409pp  · 105,551 words

of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, and lying on the rolling deck of the MV Maersk Alabama next to SEAL snipers whose precise shots save Captain Phillips from Somali pirates. We dissect the processes that create the trust and common purpose that bond great small teams, and dispel the fallacy

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far more damage than in the conventional face-off. In the cabin of the Victory on September 29 Nelson described the plan to his captains and on October 9 followed up with a secret memo further describing how the fleet should separate into columns to attack the enemy. Maybe more

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important than laying out a specific strategy, Nelson took care to emphasize the role of the individual captains. At the very core of his plan was what he later termed “the Nelson touch”: the idea that individual commanders should act on their

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own initiative once the mêlée had developed. Noting that plans could be easily foiled, he gave a final, simple piece of advice: “No captain can do very wrong if he places his ship alongside that of the enemy.” As historian and archaeologist Roy Adkins wrote, “the plan of attack

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fleet, a few miles away, was under more authoritarian rule. As Nicolson observes, Napoleon had forbidden Vice-Admiral Pierre-Charles Villeneuve to tell his captains at any stage what the grand strategy for defeating England might be. Adkins adds that “this reliance on orders from a central command proved a

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simple execution of commands. As Nicolson explains it, “Nelson created the market, but once it was created he would depend on their enterprise. His captains were to see themselves as the entrepreneurs of battle.” The development of these “entrepreneurs” took years of training and experience, but as a result of

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and bearing. More subtly, they help instill loyalty, pride, and inclusion—all part of “soldierization.” When I joined the Ranger Regiment as a young captain, the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) I followed were almost laughably detailed. My rucksack had to be packed with exactly the same equipment as every other

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performed the standard barrage of safety checks—they visually inspected the wheel wells, verified the pressure in the hydraulic systems, and tested the emergency lights. Captain Malburn A. McBroom had worked for United for more than fifteen years, and logged more than twenty-seven thousand flight hours without incident, five

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worst-case scenario involved grinding to a halt on the runway, damaging a wing but almost certainly leaving passengers alive and intact. An off-duty captain traveling aboard and consulting in the cockpit joked, “Less than three weeks to retirement, you better get me outta here.” McBroom replied, “The thing

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the brace position, and made sure everyone knew how to use the emergency exits in case they couldn’t pull up to the jetway. The captain juggled communication with his crew, the control tower, and the company that made the plane. After covering the main items on their checklist, the

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The flight engineer reminded them that, after landing, the “last guy to leave has gotta turn the battery external power switch off.” The off-duty captain disappeared for a few minutes to grab a spare flashlight, in case they lost power on the ground. The plane approached the airport a second

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time at 5:48 p.m., but there was another incoming flight, so Flight 173 yielded. In the cockpit, the captain and flight engineer discussed the placement and relative competencies of individual flight attendants. A few minutes later they checked in with the tower; there was

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way. As they circled again, the crew delved into a detailed discussion of what things would be like on the runway. After landing, the captain said, he would call maintenance in San Francisco to provide a report of what happened. They would make sure the tower knew their plans so

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they could exit the plane quickly and avoid “a million rubberneckers.” Captain McBroom asked his first officer, “Why don’t you put all your books in your bag over there, Roc,” to avoid making a mess

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. . [I’ll land] in another oh, ten minutes or so.” “They’re pretty calm and cool,” the flight engineer reported. At 6:02 p.m., Captain McBroom told the tower, “it’ll be our intention in about five minutes to land . . . we would like the equipment standing by, our indications are

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.” McBroom then realized that they had forgotten to check the gear warning horn, so they tested the circuit breaker, and McBroom sent the off-duty captain back into the cabin to perform one final check of passengers. At 6:06 the first flight attendant entered the cockpit. “Well,” she said,

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McBroom radioed the tower requesting instant approach. Then they lost another engine, leaving only two operating. At 6:11 p.m., they made contingency plans. CAPTAIN: There’s ah, kind of an interstate highway type thing along that bank on the river in case we’re short. FIRST OFFICER: Okay. Two

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minutes later, they lost the remaining two engines, rendering the highway out of reach. CAPTAIN: Okay, declare a mayday. CAPTAIN TO TOWER: Portland tower, United one seventy three heavy Mayday we’re—the engines are flaming out—we’re going down—we’re

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people suffered serious injuries. • • • Compare the tragedy of United Flight 173 to the story of US Airways Flight 1549—the plane that Captain Chesley Sullenberger ditched in the Hudson River in 2009. Shortly after the flight took off from LaGuardia Airport, a flock of Canada geese in the midst of their annual

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in a crisis each and every crew member turned to him and awaited guidance. By 2009, effective airline crews were meant to function as teams—Sullenberger was a talented pilot who performed well under pressure, but if he had had to devise and issue individual sequential instructions to every member of

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own constituent teams adaptable, and how this differed from the structure and culture of our Task Force at large, would be key to our transformation. CAPTAIN PHILLIPS “Navy SEAL” has become shorthand for a superhuman combination of strength, bravery, and skill, but the remarkable quality of SEAL teams has less

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container ship the MV Maersk Alabama and taken control of the bridge. In the ensuing scuffle, the pirates had seized the Maersk Alabama’s American captain, Richard Phillips. With Phillips being held by force on a small lifeboat, hostage negotiations ensued in the midst of a standoff between the pirates

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reached fever pitch. “The operation was nothing short of perfect,” remarked a Fox News commentator. “Our Navy SEALs saving the life of an American captain held hostage, taking out three Somali pirates in three shots, all direct hits to the head.” An MSNBC pundit quipped that the hijacking “has got

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BUD/S is not weeding out the physically weak. • • • Coleman Ruiz looks like a Navy SEAL. Six foot two and 195 pounds, he was captain of the Naval Academy wrestling team before being selected as one of sixteen graduates in his year eligible to put themselves to the test at

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would be like walking into a firefight without wearing body armor. The SEAL team in Abbottabad had not planned for the helicopter crash, just as Captain Sullenberger’s crew had not planned for the bird strike, and the Carty-Caterson team had not planned for the marathon bombing, but all were

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was no disabling problem with the plane; Flight 173 “could have landed safely within 30 or 40 minutes after the landing gear malfunction.” The captain had been so concerned with the landing gear that he stayed airborne too long. “The probable cause of the accident was the failure of the

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error.” Were pilots receiving less training? Were airlines not giving employees enough rest between shifts? Was the pressurized air at thirty-two thousand feet depriving captains’ brains of oxygen and causing irrational decision making? The conclusions of the Safety Board pointed elsewhere: “This accident exemplifies a recurring problem—a breakdown

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boat to navigate the volatile seas of complexity. NASA believed that the dwindling ability of flight crews to adapt to unforeseen events stemmed from the captains’ attempts to control and plan for everything in a vehicle that had become too sophisticated for that to be possible. Champions of the iconic

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first comprehensive CRM program. Its intensive seminars demanded that participants diagnose their own and others’ managerial styles. It trained juniors to speak more assertively and captains to be less forceful, turning vertical command-and-control relationships into flexible, multidirectional, communicative bonds. Instructors exhausted students with team-building exercises. They complemented

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attempt the emergency landing and prepare the passengers. Through intense interactions—thirty-one communications per minute—they improvised an extraordinary solution. The pilot in command, Captain Al Haynes, later said, “If we had not let everybody put their input in, it’s a cinch we wouldn’t have made it.”

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in a world where risk exists everywhere, but we have never been safer. • • • The accident report deconstructing the success of Flight 1549 noted that Sullenberger’s crew’s technical training had been completely irrelevant to the solution they achieved. No procedure for low-altitude dual-engine failure existed anywhere in

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-knit fashion. The report concluded, “The captain credited US Airways CRM training for providing him and the first officer with the skills and tools that they needed to build a team quickly and open lines of communication, share common goals, and work together.” Sullenberger’s modesty is also honesty: US Airways

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1549 was saved not by one mind, but by the ability of the captain, the first officer, and the flight crew to come together and pull toward a common

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to speak the same language; they have no need for interactive fluency. A classic military command, a corporate hierarchy, or a flight crew like Captain McBroom’s would be fairly MECE: a leader plans and assigns tasks from above, and everyone else stays in his box. Picture a MECE sports

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casting GM’s leaders as cold, calculating misers who ran the numbers and determined that the lives lost were worth the profits made—like blaming Captain McBroom for the crash of Flight 173—oversimplifies the situation. GM’s byzantine organizational structure meant that nobody—venal or kindly—had the information

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replies. He could give directions, so he did—transparency and communication together bred control. The Navy, on the other hand, couldn’t reach its captains. As Joseph Conrad explained: “A ship at sea is a world in herself and in consideration of the protracted and distant operations of the fleet

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on behalf of the president when the president can pick up the phone and call any leader in the world? Why have a ship’s captain make decisions in a vacuum when you can have his (presumably older, wiser, more experienced) superiors monitor his actions and provide instruction?* In short,

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execution lay in what had come before it: the foundation of shared consciousness. This relationship—between contextual understanding and authority—is not new. “EVERY CAPTAIN WAS A NELSON” During this period I found myself pondering an exceptional example of the Navy’s traditional embrace of empowerment, and asking myself what

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could thrive and his enemies—trained to follow flags and bearing little knowledge of the overall strategy—flailed. Nelson had told his commanders, “No captain can do very wrong if he places his ship alongside that of the enemy,” but that broad authority could have gone terribly wrong if he

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the force and the battle as a whole. This was Nelson’s equivalent of shared consciousness, and it was only because of it that his captains could thrive as empowered agents in a chaotic mêlée. • • • For most of my career in the Army, my mess dress uniform bore light

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trusted to make major decisions. In 2004 we were asking every operator to think like someone with black lapels—in other words, like Nelson’s captains. We were working to pump general-officer information and awareness throughout our ranks, giving people used to tight orders and limited visibility the insights

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knifes through the water toward it. Impact means instant death. FIRST OFFICER VASILI BORODIN: Torpedo impact, 20 seconds. His serious but utterly calm commander, Captain Marko Ramius, played by Sean Connery with a distinguished beard and tailored black navy tunic, seemingly ignores Borodin’s warning. He turns to CIA analyst

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http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/africa/04/10/somalia.u.s.ship (accessed July 8, 2014). lethal force could be . . . Robert McFadden, “Navy Rescues Captain, Killing 3 Pirate Captors,” New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/13/world/africa/13pirates.html?pagewanted=all (accessed June 30, 2014). seventy

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-five feet away, the three . . . Elisabeth Bumiller, “To Rescue Captain, U.S. Snipers Held Steady Despite Many Moving Parts,” New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/14/world/africa/14sniper.html (accessed July

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. No procedure for low-altitude . . . National Transportation Safety Board, AAR 2009, 88. “Because of time constraints” . . . National Transportation Safety Board, AAR 2009, 91. “The captain credited” . . . National Transportation Safety Board, AAR 2009, 91. A 1966 report . . . See National Academy of Sciences and National Research Council, Accidental Death and Disability: The

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. . Pentland, Social Physics, 93. average call handle time . . . Pentland, Social Physics, 94. $15 million in productivity . . . Pentland, Social Physics, 95. PART IV LETTING GO No captain . . . Nicolson, Seize the Fire, 25. CHAPTER 10: HANDS OFF largest naval force . . . John H. Schroeder, Matthew Calbraith Perry: Antebellum Sailor and Diplomat (Annapolis, Md.: Naval

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fourteen . . . Schroeder, Matthew Calbraith Perry, 11. assisted colonists . . . Schroeder, Matthew Calbraith Perry, 25. goodwill to the Ottoman Empire . . . Schroeder, Matthew Calbraith Perry, 47. promotion to captain . . . Schroeder, Matthew Calbraith Perry, 76. he had campaigned for . . . Schroeder, Matthew Calbraith Perry, xiv. in 1851 . . . Schroeder, Matthew Calbraith Perry, 168. trade between Asia

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153 State Department, U.S., 169–70 Steuben, Friedrich Wilhelm von, 35 Stewart, Potter, 56 Stirling, David, 113n stock market, 58, 63 Stone, Peter, 246 Sullenberger, Chesley, 90–91, 103, 111 Sullivan, Louis, 158 Sunni Muslims, 2, 7–8, 21–24 Sun Tzu, 34 Supreme Court, U.S., 45, 56 Suwaqah

Deep Sea and Foreign Going

by Rose George  · 4 Sep 2013  · 402pp  · 98,760 words

returns to fuelling, fast and silently. With further effort I learn that he is Romanian. Igor is Moldavian, not to be confused with Moldovan. The captain is South African. The chief engineer is a Briton called Derek, from Plymouth or nearby, with the rounded vowels of Devon. Mike, another Romanian,

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’ by an hour. Laminated warnings in the lift reinforce the change. The alerts are required because sometimes this shifting of time is commanded by the captain, not by Greenwich. It confuses humans and computer clocks, but it is done from kindness. Executed properly, this time manipulation causes no crude jetlag,

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inevitable. Cruise ships modify their structures to prevent this happening and disturbing passengers. Working seafarers must live with it. The biggest draw of the captain was his 42 years in the Merchant Navy. This means he has been at sea probably as long as the Glaswegian officer on his first

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Authorities experimented in 2010 with what happens to ships whose signals are jammed, its experiment vessel showed that it was travelling to Belfast, overland. Captain Glenn would be pleased that Lloyd’s List recommended reliance on traditional navigational equipment. The anti-terrorist sextant. A senior US government official was asked

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Dunton, once advised a woman fearing a lonely spinsterhood to get down to the docks, obviously, and find a sex-starved sailor. These days, Captain Glenn only goes ashore when strongly persuaded by the chief engineer. The pressure is applied most insistently in Pattaya, the notorious Thai resort near Laem

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might therefore carry within it the conflicts of that society.’ Kendal’s officers know what their nationalities mean in the present and the future. The captain says often that he is being used to train his replacements, because British officers are good, but they cost too much. Romanians and Ukrainians

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foundation of quite so many meals – but it never lasts. I think he probably sends dispatches about many things, protected by his position as senior captain and his approaching retirement. Napkins, for example. Flimsy scraps of tissue with solid, powerful significance. Earlier that year, the company had sent out a

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go through health and safety training. Some crew couldn’t swim, including 19-year-old Guillermo, another Uruguayan. Some were veterans, such as the popular captain, and the head stockman, Gary Baker, an Australian who had been going to sea for years. They were both big, friendly men, serious on

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showing Danny FII’s route marked with dots of Blu-Tack. A no-frills ship, an ordinary journey, no trouble expected. ‘I am sure,’ wrote Captain Thomas to Alan Atkinson, ‘that you will thoroughly enjoy yourself.’ I wonder. Welfare organizations dislike livestock carriers profoundly, and with reason. (So do Somali

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Getting told the story before the police have been told anything? It’s fricking disgraceful.’ It wasn’t until later that day that confirmation came. Captain John Milloy, found dead. For three days after the police visit, the Atkinsons were given updates by the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO)

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enquiries got nowhere. Other interested parties were also trying to get answers, from the FCO to Nautilus International, the UK seafarers’ union of which Captain Milloy had been a member. Still nothing appeared, because there was nothing to oblige Panama to do anything. The procedure that should follow a marine

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-down? Nicolás says there was; Kathleen Baker, daughter of Greg and a former employee on Danny FII, told Martin there was no way the captain would have authorized a wash-down in storm conditions. Martin reads what he can, even in Spanish, in Uruguayan newspapers that report crew members jumping

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was an aeroplane. Imagine, for example, that it was US Airways Airbus A320, landed on New York’s Hudson River by Captain Chelsey Sullenberger in 2009. Although fuel oil was discharged into the river, Captain Sullenberger was an immediate hero, because all lives were saved. No-one died either in the collision between the barge

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in danger. Navy ships are allowed to stay electronically unremarked. In principle, technology has removed much of the uncertainty relating to the movements of what Captain Glenn generally calls ‘other silly buggers’. He is constantly alert for stupidities, for navigation officers who don’t know the rules of the road

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the galley and conveys the menu: split-pea soup (without pork, after a previous cook caused chaos with Muslims), spaghetti bolognese, fishcakes, chips. ‘Yes.’ The captain is nonplussed. ‘Everything?’ ‘Yes, everything.’ A folding table is unfolded next to the pilot’s chair, and he eats. Apart from that, he sleeps:

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port official asks for ‘chocolate for my babies’. Not the Cadbury’s Fruit & Nut? ‘No, I give them the plain crap.’ Each voyage, the captain dispenses £400 worth of cigarettes. The cigarettes are listed on the ship’s budget as ‘entertainment, port authorities’, or ‘gratuities’, and accepted by company accountants

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Force 6 waves that Kendal dismisses with ease. We are taking precautions, but much of our protection is weather. On the internal email system, the captain transmits two daily news digests – Tagalog for the Filipinos, English for everyone else – and a security alert from an agency named Securewest. By now,

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run from Salalah down to Mombasa, Kenya. It was a sister ship to Maersk Alabama, which was captured by pirates in 2009 and whose captain was taken hostage and dramatically rescued by SEAL snipers who killed three pirates in darkness through the doorway of a closed lifeboat. Murderous, but impressive

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– better known as Blackbeard – and Henry Avery governed the waters of the Caribbean with considerable violence, but also by operating ships that ran democratically. Captains were elected, and kept in check by quartermasters and a council of crew. Piracy was violent and awful, but it was also the best escape

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route from the more terrible life of a merchant seafarer, where there could be no respite from tyrannical, violent captains. The US Congress has called piracy ‘violence against maritime navigation’. As long as there has been maritime navigation, there has been violence against it.

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monkeys in a monkey house’.) The schedule involves a ‘walkaround’ of a different department each day. There will be interviews with the flag commander, the captain and all department heads and anyone else I choose. Four departments are run by lieutenants – logistics, weapons, mechanics and operations – and the fifth is

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’t do anything to the pirates? The communications officers shrug. ‘We share information. That’s all.’ In the quarters that he has taken from the captain, the flag commodore – the chief of the EU-NAVFOR fleet – is everything I expect a flag commodore to be: talkative, weary and sophisticated. Alberto

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in 2011 by this harmless business activity: Marie Dedieu, Christian Colombo, Jean Adam, Scott Adam, Phyllis Mackay, Bob Riggle, David Tebbutt, Wu Lai Yu, Captain Akbarali Mamad Sanghar, Jakku Suleiman Sandi, one bo’sun, 12 unnamed sailors. Some were killed by pirates; some were shot by navy crossfire in lethal

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Docklands – into a public-friendly waterfront where no docker need set foot because no ships come to call. The museum is running an exhibit on Captain Kidd, a famous Golden Age pirate. The show features historical documents as well as swashbuckling, treasure and violence. A laughably hokey trailer for the

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high welfare standards: the library is well stocked; the DVDs are plentiful. Providing socializing or solace is apparently more difficult, even for Maersk. The captain laments the demise of the British Merchant Navy, but it is hard to recruit young people to the prospect of months on end of loneliness

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1915 Seamen’s Act legislation – nicknamed the Magna Carta of the sea – which aimed to improve the welfare of the US merchant marine. Until then, captains could and did chastise their crews with ‘fists, boots, pieces of rope, brass knuckles, pistols and ship-board items such as belaying pins, marlin

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of architectural studies. Accounts of the early missions abound with tales of not obviously religious endeavours such as chaplains sourcing a piano for a musical captain at short notice, or recruiting compliant – but not too compliant – young ladies for seamen’s dances. Some chaplains visited ships carrying lists of Old

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He shows me images of mouldy food, mouldy upholstery, shocking sinks. The crimps may have gone out of fashion but exploitation never does. At sea, Captain Glenn bewails chandlers who supply ships with green bananas that will never ripen, fruit that goes mouldy obscenely fast, sub-standard meat. He swears that

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: ‘Kirmar was on scene but maintaining her passage.’ Kendal had already abandoned her passage, although there was a berth booked for her in port. Captain Glenn risked costing the company thousands of dollars by diverting and delaying. There was no question of doing otherwise. ‘I think I was put on

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on her passage. Singapore reported that a Vietnamese warship was in the vicinity and would arrive, along with a search-and-rescue craft. Instead, as Captain Glenn’s log records, ‘Neither vessel sighted during search and rescue operation so will not be mentioned further in this report.’ Rio Imperial, a

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him with a Lady Swaythling trophy for outstanding seamanship. He made headlines in papers in the north of England. Local skipper leads dramatic rescue. Tyneside captain leads rescue mission on the high seas. The North West Evening Mail, based in Cumbria, was inspired to publish an article apparently only because

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passengers – which included evacuating children, Jewish refugees and Americans heading home – 118 were killed. The attack was a mistake on two counts: the submarine captain thought he was targeting an auxiliary liner on military business, and it also contravened the Second London Naval Treaty of 1936, an international protocol signed

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only quiet. ‘There was no show of emotion,’ wrote MacDonald. ‘I expect the others, like myself, were wondering what would happen to us.’ The captain – a 46-year-old Liverpudlian named William Rogerson – had survived the sinking, perhaps because he made sure to keep fit while on board. Perhaps just

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forward into the breach at point blank range to whatever tune is played. Whinge over. I am right though.’ Acknowledgements First, my thanks to Captain Glenn and the officers and crew of Maersk Kendal, who were kind and impeccable hosts for more than 9000 nautical miles. Kate Sanderson, publicist for

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on Kendal. From the shipping industry, I have had many helpers and advisors, principally Alastair Evitt, Grant Hunter, Clay Maitland, Janet Porter, Gavin van Marle, Captain Kuba Szymanski. Michelle Wiese Bockman, Bloomberg’s highly capable shipping correspondent, has been remarkably and consistently generous with her knowledge. Online, Glen Ford and David

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Rider, of OCEANUS-Live and Neptune Maritime Security respectively, have been illuminating and expansive with their insights into piracy, security and shipping in general. Captain Quentin Oates of EU-NAVFOR arranged my trip on Vasco da Gama, and the men and women of the Marinha Portugesa were kind enough to

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is it to Somalia? US embassy cable captured by Wikileaks, accessed via http://www.cablegatesearch.net, cable reference 09PORTLOUISE146 – Combat trauma, explosive and intelligence-gathering Captain Alexander Martin, US Marine Corps, ‘Pirates Beware: Force recon has your number’, published on US Naval Institute website, http://www.usni.org, 24 July 2010

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Violent assaults in South Africa Oceans Beyond Piracy, The Human Cost of Somali Piracy, 6 June 2011, p.4. 4 Amputated the hand of its captain Somalia Report, ‘Pirates Copy Al-Shabab’s Amputation Tactic’, 24 January 2012. 5 Detestable activity House of Commons Transport Committee, Eighth Report, printed 26 June

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-england-hampshire- 1845753 – Those seven are back at sea Laskier, My Name is Frank, p.65. Chapter 11: Disembark 1 Then cut off the captain’s fingers joint by joint Peter Gwin, ‘Dark Passage’, National Geographic, October 2007. 2 The latest judgement of war risks Lloyd’s Market Association Joint

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Custom of the Sea: The Shocking True Tale of Shipwreck and Cannibalism on the High Seas, London: Corgi Books, 1999. Hardberger, Max, Seized: A Sea Captain’s Adventures Battling Pirates & Recovering Stolen Ships in the World’s Most Troubled Waters, London: Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 2010. Heaton Vorse, Mary, Time and

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and of the Beachcombers, Oceanographers, Environmentalists and Fools, Including the Author, Who Went in Search of Them, New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1990. Johnson, Captain Charles, A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pirates, London: Conway Maritime Press, 1998. Kemp, Peter (ed), The Oxford Companion

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Parker, Matthew, Hell’s Gorge: The Battle to Build the Panama Canal, London: Arrow Books, 2008. Parker, Tony, Lighthouse, London: Eland, 2006. Phillips, Richard, A Captain’s Duty: Somali Pirates, Navy SEALs, and Dangerous Days at Sea, New York: Hyperion, 2010. Raban, Jonathan, The Oxford Book of the Sea, Oxford: Oxford

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1, 2, 3, 4 Corbett, James, 1 Cormier, Monsieur, 1 Correia, Commodore Alberto Manuel Silvestre, 1 Coughran, Douglas, 1 counterfeiters, 1 Crane, Stephen, 1 Cremer, Captain Peter, 1 Crichton, Michael, 1 crimps, 1, 2 Critchley, MacDonald, 1 Crouch, Annie, 1 cruise ships, 1, 2, 3, 4 CSAV Rio Imperial, 1, 2

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, 1, 2 gas supplies, 1, 2 George V, King, 1, 2 German Bight, 1, 2 Geveza, Akhona, 1, 2 Ghaziabad, 1 giraffes, 1 Glenn, Captain approaching retirement, 1 authority and friendliness, 1 autobiography, 1 career at sea, 1 and containers, 1, 2 and discipline, 1 joins Maersk Kendal, 1 and

…

1 particulate emissions, 1 Pattaya, 1 Paul, Roy, 1 Pelton, Robert Young, 1 Penang, 1 people traffickers, 1 Philadelphia, 1 Philipse, Colonel Frederick, 1 Phillips, Captain Richard, 1 pig iron, cargoes of, 1 pigeons, 1, 2 Pillars of Hercules, 1, 2 Pillay, Navi, 1 pilots, 1, 2 piracy and pirates anti

…

Knight, 1 Richardson, Pam, 1 Riggle, Bob, 1 RMS Laconia, 1 RMS Queen Elizabeth II, 1 RMS Titanic, 1, 2, 3 Roberts, Bartholomew, 1 Rogerson, Captain William, 1 Rolland, Roz, 1 Romanian seafarers, 1 Romney, Mitt, 1 Roosevelt, President Franklin D., 1, 2 Roper, Janet (Mother Roper), 1 Rotterdam, 1

…

Augustine, 1 Salalah, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 Oasis Club, 1 Samsung Heavy Industries, 1 San Francisco, 1 Sandi, Jakku Suleiman, 1 Sanghar, Captain Akbarali Mamad, 1 sanitation, on-board, 1 Saunders, Rupert, 1 Savarese, Giuseppe, 1 Saved from the Sea (film), 1 Schettino, Francesco, 1 sea turtles, 1

…

Strickler, Homer, 1 Strong, L.A.G., 1 Suez Canal, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 construction, 1 crews, 1 pilots, 1 transit costs, 1 Sullenberger, Captain Chelsey, 1 sulphur content, in fuel, 1, 2 Sumatra, 1, 2 Sunday Times (South Africa), 1 supply vessels, 1, 2, 3 Tapscott, Robert, 1 Taskar

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