Airline pilots. I was surprised.
Quartz ran an article in which an investigator discovered that pilots were often using prohibited equipment to take photos of the cockpit, the scenery, the view as they were landing, all actions which are prohibited by the airlines. Just as we passengers get told there are certain gadgets we have to shut off or put in airplane mode during phases of the flight, the crew has even more stringent requirements — they’re, for instance, required to maintain a “sterile cockpit” with no electronic distractions at all during take-off and landing.
Yet the pilots and copilots are happily uploading photographs taken when regulations say they aren’t allowed to use their GoPro or iPhone. It seems fair to me to point out that pilots are flouting the rules; you could make an argument that perhaps the rules are a little too restrictive, but you can’t deny that the pilots are breaking them.
The pilots went insane, and have been harassing and threatening the reporter who tattled on them.
I hope some aviator (whether it’s me or not is immaterial) gets to throat-punch you for Christmas,is a typical Facebook comment.Hell, just thinking about it makes me feel all warm inside. Eat shit and die.
That’s a lot of macho bluster — I would hope the airlines would instantly fire a pilot who punched a passenger in the throat. But this is more subtle and chilling.
So pilots can just throw paying passengers off on a whim? They talk about scanning manifests for people they don’t like, of putting people on no-fly lists, just generally harassing anyone they disagree with. Furthermore, looking at the forums these angry threats were taken from, you get the distinct impression that all pilots are assholes. I hope that’s not true, but man, this is a PR disaster for their profession.
NOte how they’re apparently happy to use their own names?
I guess if their employer now decides that they need to be on the no-fly list it will all be the journalist’s fault, right?
My husband’s workplace has a serious “no pictures on company soil” rule. One day, in a serious storm a building crane was blown over. Some idiot took a foto and sold it for 300 bucks to the yellow press. He also lost his job. The Union didn’t even try to save his ass.
How do you go from ‘a few pilots’ to rife with douchebaggery?
Seems a bit of a leap.
Such rules aren’t there for the ninety-nine times out of a hundred when nothing would have gone wrong if you didn’t have your eye on the ball. They’re there for the one time when it would have.
Janiceintoronto @2
Yes, let’s make it all about the hyperbole used and not the pilots’ horrible reactions. Thanks for setting our priorities straight, Janice. What would we do without you?
Emotional outbursts are not a good thing in pilots.
oh wait…
is this actually about ethics in airplane journalism?
Are those poor pilots so unaccustomed to criticism that the only way they can handle it is to get emotional?
I remember a JetBlue flight I took a little while back. I saw the flight attendant messing around with something and then she disappeared into the front bathroom. Then she came out and knocked on the cabin door, and one of the pilots came out, they exchanged conspiratorial whispers, and he went in while she guarded the door.
I was waiting to go… He came out, and she continued to block the door for a bit and then let me in.
I smelled badly of cigarette smoke, so much I got a headache. Also a tiny bit of coffee smell. That was coming from one of those big prepacked industrial coffee filter bag things she’d hung on the door hook. That’s what she’d been messing with. What they imagined was an amazing powerful smoke-remover they’d discovered. (Not to hate on smokers, but they never know how much smell they generate).
I came out with apparently some kind of a look on my face, because she winked at me and make a conspiratorial “shhh” gesture.
On the door, underneath the big hanging coffee bag, there was a sticker warning me that if I smoked it was a federal crime that could carry imprisonment and a stiff fine.
:shrug:
And chigau wins the thread at #6
Minnesota Public Radio reporter Bob Collins noted this story on his News Cut blog a few days ago:
Airline pilots: Put down the cameras and fly the plane
Most pilots are professionals who are o.k. with the regulation on operating wireless devices, but obviously, some prefer acting out.
“They’re breaking da rules” doesn’t really seem like a P.Z. thing to say. I mean, I agree, but then again I agreed with the decision to arrest some kids playing with fireworks for experimental reasons.
As for changing the rules, I’m all for it. Boredom is a reality of human psychology. A bored pilot is just as likely to miss something important as a distracted pilot, and boredom is inevitable. Lighten the restrictions a bit, unless having pilots stare at absolutely nothing for the majority of their work shift every single day seems like it’ll actually stimulate good thinking during a crisis. It’s just unreasonable to say “pay perfect attention to all the panels and the windows, unceasingly and without error, for 8 hours at a stretch, every single day of your working life”.
I can only speak anecdotally, but a very close loved one works at a hotel very near a major East Coast airport that regularly hosts flight crews and they are absolutely some of the rudest pieces of crap you would ever care to encounter. When they aren’t being rude and demanding the impossible, they just assume their flight skills mean that any woman on the planet must totally want to hop into bed with them. A few them are professional and courteous and just want to get some sleep, but they are the exception.
FYI, this is why there are rules about the use of electronic devices by pilots:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Airlines_Flight_188
Oh, I thought you were going to say dentistry students.
Didn’t you read the critical part?
The two times where a crash is most likely to happen, and you want to allow pilots distracted by playing with their personal electronic equipment? I think most of the passengers would say “I don’t think so Tim”. Nothing wrong with using such equipment when above 5,000 feet or the autopilot takes over.
Why are you surprised, PZ?
Many of these pilots are former military. As a military spouse, I’ve met quite a few cocky, arrogant pilots.
If they were that way when they were active duty military, what do you expect when they are working in the civilian world?
I would have no problem with a reasonable adjustment to the rules — I was very happy when they ended that nonsense of requiring passengers to turn off their kindles/ipads during takeoff and landing. But these are very well-paid professionals with serious responsibilities, and when their companies tell them that they’re supposed to pay full attention to the plane during the most dangerous phases of the flight, I’m inclined to be less than sympathetic when they break those rules.
I have extended family that used to be a pilot. It’s high pressure and a boys club. I have had no doubt that most pilots that have survived through the shit that other pilots have put them through are douche canoes themselves. For the record, my extended family member is not a douche canoe… she’s actually pretty laid back and cool to be around.
I’ve always been baffled by the air of superiority that commercial airline pilots carry. I have no doubt that it’s high stress and long hours, or that there are many moments of harrowing situations. But I can think of a few other jobs where you encounter the same… like driving a taxi, and they don’t have to where stupid costumes to work. I’m also betting that their on-the-job mortality rate is much much higher.
You know, there’s rules and rules.
There are rules that are fuck annoying but actually not infringing on your human rights. Those are the rules you obey while trying to change them.
Then there are rules that infringe on your human rights. Those you can break while fighting them.
You can now decide what kind of rule “no selfies during take-off” is.
@PZ Myers
They aren’t really paid that well.
http://thetruthabouttheprofession.weebly.com/professional-pilot-salaries.html
It is the first rule of capitalism at play – the people who do the things aren’t the ones who get the money.
Colloquial folk sociology “douchebaggery” still sounds very reminiscent of social psychology “social dominance orientation”.
Dark Jaguar@11:
I think you missed the point of the post. You may have noticed the awful crap pilots were saying to the reporter that you seem to be ignoring in favor of talking about the restrictions on the poor, poor pilots. It’s a HELLUVA lot more “unreasonable” to say “shut your whore mouth” you think?
The SO used to teach some kids of an airline pilot. He and his wife had flown in the airforce before that, and he told that being an airline pilot, with all the automated equipment (designed to minimize the risk of human error, mind you), was boring as hell. Most modern airplanes fly themselves to a large extent – which does not mean that it is a comforting idea that someone in the front is messing about with devices that could have unexpected effects on vital airplane equipment, at times when the airplane is going through the riskiest stages of a flight.
From the article:
New York’s finest!
I see a problem with their rationalizations, and FAA’s too. It was always well documented that wireless devices in the cabin do NOT interfere with the devices in the cockpit*. And the FAA finally realized this by loosening the ban during takeoff and landing. What these guys are doin is moving the electronic handheld devices directly INTO the cockpit where all the sensitive electronics is, and where the interference noise from the handhelds will be the strongest ( 1 over R squared, etc).
Is that tweet really meant to imply that their 100k ($?) training teaches them to know the exact moment when the electronics will be least affected by the handheld? If so, I think their training does NOT do so.
and they got a real bias in their statistics there. “How many aircraft were lost because the pilot wanted to take a selfie?” Question: if the plane is lost, how will one know if the pilot was foolin around with selfies? And the obvious corollary: if pilots, in the cockpit, can fool around with those handheld gadgets, why are passengers (outside the cockpit, where all the sensitive electronics are) forbidden to do so, as well?
–
* see Mythbusters
#6, chigau
Awesome ;-)
#11, dark jaguar
Leaving aside the rules for a moment, you might perhaps pay attention to the fact that a group in a position of responsibility and power are making threats of violence and refusal of travel to someone who they perceive as a threat to their little privileges. Heaven forfend that they be forced down to the level of mere self-loading freight like you or I!
That’s what elevates them from humdrum hypocrisy to the lofty heights of internet douchebaggery. Not the fact that they’ve been flaunting the rules.
A pilot’s job is pretty much following rules. There are checklists for everything, and they must be followed for good reason. Breaking any rule is pretty much a slippery slope, and good grounds for dismissal.
The pay is poor, though. The only people piloting are those who really want to, and that may get some ego involved. Screaming threats of abusing power is wrong, no matter how few do it, and it does reflect on the entire group. Paid and trained professionals should hold each other to a high standard.
(I have walked through the wreckage of a plane that crashed because the pilots broke the loading rules. That Malaysia flight that was never found probably went wonky really fast during a boring part of the flight. Flight records often show pilots ignoring crucial information for seemingly trivial reasons – flight records pulled from smoking rubble.)
Flauting. No, flouting.
It is has nothing to do with cockpit sensitivity to electromagnetic emissions from electronic devices. It’s about being distracted during critical phases of flight. Even bullshitting during takeoff and landing is prohibited because that has killed people before.
It’s like texting while driving.
Having said that, the rules against photos during non-sterile phases of flight are probably stupid. Boredom may actually be a greater risk during those phases than electronic devices, books, conversation, or whatever else.
ougaseon @29
Even during non-sterile phases the first thought should be “Is there anything that I may miss in my pre-flights which could endanger the lives of everyone aboard?” not “God, this job is such a drag, I don’t want to focus on making things as safe as they could possibly be.”
It sounds like these pilots are more of the latter variety. I didn’t feel safe before, but now I’ll need to be completely knocked out the next time I fly.
Background: I have a lot of experience with the general aviation side of things. My dad was (doesn’t really fly anymore) a private pilot and instructor, and I was a certified observer (we did search and rescue for the Civil Air Patrol in Az way back when). Our training for SAR involved a minimum of 6 hours (I think that’s the number) flying/month, or something to that effect.
Also, I have a few friends with small planes and go flying with them on a regular basis. I’m not a licensed pilot (yet), but I’ve done everything except actually take off and land (the most dangerous parts….). I have flown at least a few hundred hours in simulators.
I also work in the industry. I am on the manufacturing, certification, and regulation side of things, but my work demands my awareness of operating regulations as well as the regulations that govern the building and structure of the actual aircraft.
I have taken pics and videos similar to what the original story is about. Of course, I wasn’t flying, and the planes I have been in are mostly pre-electronics, with nothing to interfere with even if my camera/phone were broadcasting.
A lot of those photos appear (can’t say for sure, though) to be taken from the engineer’s seat, who is often a third member in the cockpit. Since most aircraft these days (and regulations) require two pilots in the cockpit, the third person could, at least from a regulations standpoint, take the pictures/video without breaking the rules. That doesn’t apply during takeoff and landing, though. The sterile cockpit rule should over rule even that otherwise mostly harmless action.
The newsworthy part of this story is, as PZ noted, and a few here seem to have *ahem* inadvertently overlooked, is the pilot’s reaction to it. The pilots who were doing this should have had the good sense to shut up, and most of the other pilots should have said that this was indeed, a violation of the rules. (They may have gone on to try to justify it in some situations, but admitting that the journalist was correct would at least make it honest.)
The problem is that this mostly white, male, dominated profession reacted as so many do to any threat to their privilege. It is no longer about taking pictures, selfies, or videos out of the cockpit while flying, it is now about how inappropriate it is to react to the story by sending death threats, threatening to put people on no-fly lists, and otherwise being douchenuggets. Who would be dumb enough to bet against the odds that if the reporter were female, there would also have been a fair number of rape threats?
This is probably some kind of corollary to Lewis’ law coming into effect here. Police unions, pilots, frats…..they are all indicative of the culture, and the mirror they are holding reflects very very badly on them, and the larger culture that to many continue to deny is the problem. Those of you who think that ‘PZ’s post is about breaking da rulz’ might want to do a little introspection (try it, it’s a bit uncomfortable, but the results are generally worth it) and see what you think your priorities are.
[I will not return to making snarky one liners. Oh, and credit to chigau for winning the thread so early!]
People are awful; it’s Wednesday. :-/
@4 throwaway, never proofreads, every post a gamble
17 December 2014 at 9:22 am
Janiceintoronto @2
How do you go from ‘a few pilots’ to rife with douchebaggery?
Seems a bit of a leap.
“Yes, let’s make it all about the hyperbole used and not the pilots’ horrible reactions. Thanks for setting our priorities straight, Janice. What would we do without you?”
Hyperbole doesn’t make the case for wrongdoing. It is unnecessary, like your snark…
I’m surprised no one mentioned the porn some Air Canada pilots apparently thought was appropriate in the cockpit.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/air-canada-grapples-with-explicit-material-in-cockpit-1.2776551
janiceintoronto @33
No, what is un-fucking-necessary is your insistence that we aren’t all smart enough to know the difference between reality and the alleged reality you think we perceive where douchebags are 100% of all pilots. What does make the case for wrongdoing is the fact that we have pilots defending rules violations with threats of violence toward whistle-blowers, coupled with sexism etc. I’m sorry, but you’re way the fuck off-base here, so don’t be pissed that you got tagged with snark.
janiceintoronto #33:
And your own comment pointing out an example of utterly harmless hyperbole was necessary because…?
janiceintoronto @ 33:
This is a blog, not a newspaper, so adjust your standards accordingly. I do… ;^)
My son works in an environment with lots of rules. When co-workers say “That’s stupid,” his reply is “Their toys. If you want to play with them, follow their rules.”
I’ve been an aircraft mechanic for close to 15 years and currently work at a major international airline. Don’t get me wrong… There are nice, civil-minded, friendly pilots who are some great people. But, I also feel like the career field has the tendency to attract type-A narcissists who aren’t nearly as intelligent and wonderful as they believe themselves to be. With that also comes the typical “This is a man’s career field and women shouldn’t fly,” type of attitude from many of them.
Also, most of you probably don’t want to hear that your pilot knows very little about how the airplane operates. Most of them know how to point it, steer it, and get it to the destination, but with the rise of automation, the pilot’s job is really nothing more than a glorified instrument monitor. Based on the “discrepancies” I sometimes receive, I often wonder how some of them even make it into the cockpit.
The pilot who talked about crashes related to selfies is right. I don’t know of a crash that has occurred because of a selfie. But, I do know that some 90% or so of all aviation crashes are attributed to pilot error and/or the pilots having their heads up their asses.
pilots being assholes…
I think I learned that from Family Guy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKWB7V3jvyQ
win.
There will no doubt be some pilots looking for work or at least having a stint of unpaid leave. I can’t see the airlines taking the PR hit of not responding to the threats on passengers.
That said, even the relaxed standards on electronics for passengers and crew are ridiculous. All of the avionics are well shielded. It would be criminally negligent for them not to be. There is absolutely no danger to the plane from a passenger doing anything with their phone, tablet, or e-reader. There is also no real danger posed by one of the three people in the cockpit snapping a picture on take off or landing. If the pilots had acted like decent human beings, there wouldn’t be a story here other than the passenger being a bit of a douche by trying to make the pilots lives more difficult. As it is, the story is some pilots acting egregiously enough that it reflects poorly on their profession and calls for disciplinary action by the airlines.
I suppose the good news is that planes are still incredibly mind numbingly safe, in spite of this. One day I hope to have some reason to fly in one.
if it’s a public transpo jetliner, and you have a long trip ahead of you… no, you shouldn’t be looking forward to that.
conditions on board the “cattle cars” these days are so bad that I dread any flight that lasts more than an hour. The air quality is absolutely terrible, they pack you in like proverbial sardines, and the food is just terrible any more.
I got seriously ill on my flight from California to New Zealand a few years back, owing to the very poor air quality.
so, while the plane has little danger of dropping out of the sky, there are other things that make flying not a pleasurable experience, at least.
that said, if you have a buddy with their own plane, flying in a small prop plane is a blast.
Meh. “The rules”. I can understand WHY those rules are in place; that is, what purpose they serve. But you know, often – especially when you’ve been doing stuff for awhile – you learn how things REALLY work. A hell of a lot of rules are there to cover asses. I work in logistics at a retailer; among our rules is, apparently, no trash cages on the floor after the store opens, don;t use vehicles for trash after the store opens (Use the provided levitations devices…I guess?), don’t stand pallets on their side, don’t leave the compactor area door open if you’re not using it at the exact moment. And I follow these rules. But how many people have actually had the pallets fall over on them, let alone resulting in injury? How many people have managed to fall over the 3 foot inner compactor door and get crushed? Rhetorical questions.
A lot of “workplace rules” are pro forma ass-covering bullshit that either doesn’t matter, or actively hamstrings the ability to do the job. I’m barely five and half feet and sometimes have to unload a truck with merchandise stacked over 6′ high. Even with provided ladders there’s a high risk of stuff falling on me, and that’s happened to several coworkers. I get cuts from boxes and splintered pallets and truck panels and my own tape-cutting single edge razor nearly every day, At the end of the day I have to suck it up and do what I have to do to get the job done. And I learn which rules are REALLY GOOD IDEAS and which ones are “the rules”. ofc I follow them anyway.
At any rate, considering the pilot’s lives are also on the line, I’m fairly comfortable with their confidence they can handle a few seconds to snap a picture. Do pilots even autonomously steer a plane when landing? Because I’d be terrified with the idea of plane landings being entirely handled by human judgment and reaction, seeing as they can’t even see the ground. That’s surely not the case, the systems handle most of the calculations, right?
rpjohnston,
Car drivers’ lives are also on the line when they’re driving, but that doesn’t stop some of them from doing some incredibly dangerous and stupid things. Humans are pretty bad at evaluating both risk and their own skill.
Also, the point is not the breaking of rules. The point is the utterly awful response to having this pointed out.
@brucegorton #20
I’ve heard that regional and commuter pilots are definitely not paid very well, in addition to having to fly smaller planes that are more sensitive to things like load distribution and wake turbulence (both of which have caused crashed in these types of planes). Though these pilots tend to be newer with less experience, so probably not as headstrong as more veteran pilots like in the original post.
BTW, is anyone else reminded of a pre-9/ll SNL sketch with Will Ferrell as any angry pilot and Tobey Maguire as his young copilot? It was basically Ferrell being really friendly and nice to Maguire only to get on the PA and immediately start threatening the passengers–including things like punching people in the throat. I remember he had a line like “You gotta let ’em know who’s boss on this bird.”
I worked around pallets and I can’t count the number of times people got whacked when they tried to stand one on its side or otherwise stack them half-assed, usually the same people who claimed all the rulez were just proforma bullshit solely designed for the purpose of covering the ass of some nebulous “they” and preventing them from doin’ their jobs The Right Way™. And as for the compactor/baler door, ask yourself how long it takes to close the darn thing. From my experience, about two seconds. If simply closing a door can prevent even one death or injury, how the heck is that some silly rule? It’s not just CYA if the thing being prevented is death or injury.
Considering the taxi drivers lives are also on the line, I’m fairly comfortable with their confidence they can take a few seconds to snap a picture/have a drink/drive on an hour of sleep…
Isn’t the “put your stuff away during take-off and landing” rule there to keep stuff from flying around in case of a sudden stop?
sure. but what makes me a lot more uncomfortable, is that evidently there are a lot of pilots who feel it’s fine and dandy to threaten people who report rule breaking, or to put people on “no fly lists” because of their own personal grievances.
that makes me a LOT less confident.
good point. People are people, and if they don’t take rules seriously, who’s to say if they aren’t doing far more egregious things than snapping pictures from the cockpit?
Why would you trust a pilot to be able to decide what is and isn’t safe in a cockpit any more than you would trust a nurse to prescribe drugs? It’s not in their training. It’s not in their expertise. In the end, you’re just deferring to authority because of a uniform.
No, it was more the fear that the hand held devices would interfere with communications and avionics. Both have been shown to be not a problem. The Mythbusters even showed in one episode no effect on the avionics.
The problem with the pilots is that they are still in charge of the landing/take-off, as only a few airports have the proper instruments for true instrument take-off/landing. They should have their focus on the job at that point, rather than other things, like taking pictures.
There are serious assloads of studies that go into airline safety. If the rules say something, there is probably a good reason for it.
Flying is one of the most amazing professions possible. Breaking the rules just for fun is really dumb – risk your job for a selfie? Especially when you are also risking your life and the lives of others, at the same time – the level of arrogant stupidity is hard to believe, but we have the pilots own responses as further evidence.
Yeah, I got an up-close look at a medical helicopter once. I was standing in the door looking up at the rotorhead, happily figuring out how it all worked. I asked the pilot if it did thus or so, and he just shrugged and said he had no idea. (Another time it was a big military turbine-powered helicopter, and some uniformed helper, not the pilot, was telling us that the rotors lifted it and the engines pushed it along. (No, the engines drive the rotors, dipshit.))
So one time my dad was manning an Air Force start cart, waiting beside a jet fighter. The pilot came swaggering out, and asked if he’d found anything in the preflight check. Dad said the rule is that the pilot check his own plane. The pilot snaps out his famous name. Dad says he knew that, but he also knew the rules. So the pilot stomped through a preflight, got his start, turned the plane so the jet blast was going right at the cart, set the brakes and slammed the throttle. Dad was hiding behind the cart, which included a tank of gasoline, with nowhere to go, nothing to do but pray, until the pilot let up. All because the pilot expected the safety rules to be bent for him. So, yes, this has been going on long time. (That same pilot, by the way, is guy all the pilots imitate on the radio, saying certain phrases and a sorta southern accent, some maybe they got the attitude from him, too. It was Chuck Yeager.)
For the record, Ryan Cunningham, some nurses do prescribe drugs, as it is within their training and expertise.
Even outside of NPs, all nurses do know what are the appropriate medications for all the common conditions (as well as the less-common in their area of expertise), including dosing, side effects, contraindications, etc. A lot of the time (especially in the hospital), your nurse will tell your doctor, “Mr. Cunningham needs ____” and your doctor will prescribe it.
——
It’s not the rule about no cameras/phones that bothers me so much, its (1) the fact that the pilots are so blatantly violating it and (2) that their response to getting caught is to rain abuse on the person who caught them.
Humans are a group which is rife with douchebaggery. Any subset of the human population not chosen based on criteria that preclude douchebaggery will have an overabundance of douchebags.
@25 twas brillig:
As a former aircraft mechanic myself (Boeing 707, 727, 737, 757) you will be pleased to know that the larger commercial airliners, at least, keep the heart of the actual electronic devices in a compartment under the cockpit floor, a spot called the electronics bay (or “e-bay” before it came to mean something else entirely). Flight Management System computers, EICAS computers, gyroscopes, radar altimeter unit, etc. The displays in the cockpit are mainly just head units which relay the information computed by the gear downstairs.
However, I imagine this is less true with the smaller commuter jets like the Bombardier CRJ 100/200 and the Embraer ERJ 135/145. These came into service mostly after my era. They’re much more common today and have much less space for an e-bay, so I imagine more of their instrumentation is self-contained in the cockpit head units. So you may have a point.
I have a keen appreciation for the inverse square law, and recognize that it works both ways. :-)
Remember the pilots a couple years back that over shot their destination by a few hundred miles. Asleep most certainly. Pilots sleep all the time. Thin air. Sunshine in the window. Hum of engines. Long work hours. Boredom. Hopefully only one at a time is sleeping.
@45:
That attitude is very understandable but is also why, in jobs where mistakes can have high impact, you need rules and you need to enforce them–even when breaking them doesn’t cause harm.
Airline safety rules have a lot of redundancy built in. Accidents require a combination of breaking rules, mistakes and bad luck (ie, mechanical failures or lousy weathers) all at the same time. This means that experienced pilots “learn” that breaking rules is OK–they’ve done it before and had average luck and everything is fine.
Of course, an experienced pilot might have what, a thousand flights in a large jet? They look down the pencil pushers who’ve never piloted of course and think everything is a CYA approach.
The thing is many pilots have their 1000 flights and probably zero accident experience. The rules-making pencil pushers have 8,000,000 flights per year to look at and every single accident and near miss to analyze. Who do you think knows how “things REALLY work”? Hint: It’s not the pilots who’ve had a string of decent luck.
My instincts are usually with the hands-on pragmatic practitioner who can give the 90% solution quickly and knows the last 10% is something you can workaround. It’s what I do in my job (on a good day, anyway.) But air travel isn’t a case where that’s good enough. And the reason it has gotten ridiculously safe isn’t because of smug pilots posting that they “know” what’s safe, it’s because of the engineers and analysts.
magistamaria
Many years ago I saw a PBS documentary called “The Wrong Stuff” which was based on exactly this phenomenon. They had a flight simulator re-enactment of an crash where the Pilot and the flight engineer where so busy mocking the first officer that they ignored his warnings that they were coming too “hot” and ended up going off the end of the runway.
I work at a self storage center and I have rented to 2 commercial pilots, one was a woman who flew a Twin Otter (an old slow turboprop bushplane) and the other was a guy who flew 737s. Nice folks both of them, but the 737 pilot once said to me “you must deal with a lot of jerks”. Actually, I haven’t had to deal with many jerks, so I wonder if he was extrapolating from his co-workers.
I listen to Drew Rae’s Disastercast (Disasters, Accidents, and How to Stop them Happening) podcast and he points out that one problem with any automated control system is that situations when these systems hand control back to the human operator are usually situations where things have gotten too extreme for the automated system to handle such as stalls, extreme angles of bank, engine failure etc. If the flight crew are not ready to take control immediately or fail to notice the developing emergency the result is not good. This why they need to all (including the flight engineer) be focused on the task at hand during take off and landing. A China air 747 crew did a 5G aileron roll after they failed to notice the autopilot had shut off while they were dealing with an engine failure. They were able to land the severely damaged aircraft and didn’t kill anybody during the aerobatics.
#45, rpjohnston
Most landings are manual, even in reduced visibility. There’s lots of assistance via instruments on airliners, but they’re basically passive and the humans do all the work. This isn’t exactly a bad thing; commercial pilots have a pretty good safety record after all.
I believe that some small percentage of landings are done automatically (for suitably equipped aircraft and runways, and suitably trained pilots), just to make sure that everything works nicely in case you might need to use it in anger in the future.
It is now. I just flew a couple of weeks ago; the rule now is you can keep using your small (phone or tablet) devices but you have to have your laptop stowed.
Seriously, folks, aircraft accidents are analyzed in every possible way. There are articles describing how they figured out that one little valve would feed backwards in certain conditions, that reference thick reports. There are teams from America sifting crash sites in Indonesia. It is rocket science – the first “A” in NASA stands for “aeronautics”. There is a Federal Aviation Administration (I have an FAA shirt that I wear on Halloween, because FAA inspectors are scarily rigorous). Manufacturers work with the government to make planes safe, safer, safest.
Safety procedures have been developed from careful study and from people dying. Yes, you can call them “rules” and bend them many a time, but they were set up for that one-in-a-million chance that is going to come up somewhere soon in the thousands of flights that are in the air at any time. Sooner or not-quite-as-soon, an unsafe procedure is going to kill somebody, and the flight recorder will show that it was some human error that seems bogglingly stupid in hindsight.
If the pilots regard the safety regulations with the same hatred and contempt that they openly show for the reporter, they are the ones that should be on a no-fly list.
Yes. People.
Menyambal
Yes, – who knows what other safety regulations they have contempt for – up to and including drinking alcohol before flying. I suspect there is a lot of “we don’t need to this because autopilot” going on. There are a lot of crashes that happen because the crew reacts too late when the autopilot disengages. A few years ago a commuter plane crashed because the flight crew did not recover from a stall at cruising altitude which should have been plenty of room for recovery.
Again, I want to re-iterate that the really important (I think, and I think PZ’s point) is that the pilots and supporters of the pilots responding to this story are being complete a-holes.
Having said that, the broader discussion is interesting. :)
For those who say electronics are no big deal (and it’s moderately supported by Mythbusters), read this:
http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/aviation/unsafe-at-any-airspeed
Disclaimer: The report is from 2006. I don’t know how much has changed since then in terms of RF output from cell phones and electronics.
Probably the important takeaway:
So I’m not familiar with the Mythbusters episode in question, if they just tested a single, or even a small number of phones, it might not have been a good representative test.
I do think the larger point that the pilots are human, with human fallibility and all that comes with it, as has been noted multiple times, is quite important. The simple fact that they consider the rule about a sterile cockpit to be so easily ignored may say more about a larger issue with their attitude towards safety. The analogy of cab drivers, and people in general driving is also apt.
Another item: Many aircraft (less so in the US and Europe, but there are still a significant number of them) are older, and their nav systems may be more prone to interference than the newer generations of aircraft. Not many people are aware of this, but a lot of the regulations are not applied retroactively when they are updated. That is actually a very rare occurrence. So all those older aircraft may not be up to the same code as the newer generations.
Meyanbal, I once had the opportunity to go work for the NTSB as an aircraft incident investigator. One of the few regrets I have is not taking that job. I realize that at times it could have been quite stressful, but most of the time, it would be ‘near misses’ and similar incidents were I would be part of a team making recommendations to improve safety.
Hmm, I’d always taken it for granted that commercial pilots were a rather unreformed group. It’s a highly male dominated career, populated by a small number of men who tend to know each other. There’s a reputation for big egos driven by both technical and life-or-death performance requirements. They spend long, boring hours in a tiny room with significant privacy and only the company of other in-group men. After a day of flying they land in a city where they have no family and have 8-12 hours off before they pack up and fly again.
Perfect recipe for a good-ole-boy’s network.
In any case, it was a pilot who flew SFO -> Singapore and back who introduced me to the term “LBFM”. If you need to look it up, the first entry in Urban Dictionary is the one he was using.
don’t forget dolphins.
well, and monkeys.
ok, fuck it. let’s be real:
everything.
It’s about this, according to Bob Collins:
Uh, yes; I’m actually a bit surprised you didn’t know. It’s tradition that the captain has the last word on who is allowed to board (note my use of ship terms).
Where did you take off? In LA?
…and the second, and the third, and the fourth, and the fifth.
It’s my sense of outrage, and a cup of coffee, that gets me going in the morning.
yeah, go figure. the air quality in Los Angeles is actually far better than you get on a long plane flight.
it’s a real thing, in case you think I’m exaggerating. travel more. you’ll see.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970204261704574275980659583434
And the OP criticized the use during those portions of the flights.
Then you weren’t paying attention to the responses from Pilots in the OP. They weren’t responsible, rather immature and arrogant.
Then they should be criticized nitwit.
Nobody but you, nitwit, said that.
Fine, you must show some evidence that it the case nitwit. MERRY XMAS NITWIT.
jezus #77:
Please do not use mental health issues as a slur.
Only in your delusional mind nitwit. Only disparaging toward pilots who disobey SOPs (like in my business, pharmaceuticals), and those with attitudes about being called out for being assholes. Arrogant fools who should be called out by normal pilots obeying FAA regs.
No, you are defending arrogant fools by trying to explain away their alibis. Now, show us with evidence you are right, or you are nothing but the equivalent of rape/police murder of POC apologist. Why are you defending that which should be condemned, and not apologized for/dismissed?
Shall we request a Xmas banning?
NO nitwitted and fuckwitted idjit. We who work in pharmaceuticals, even the periphery, must OBEY WITHOUT QUESTION FDA REGS.
By not condemning the few who flaunt FAA regs, you are also condemning those you want to defend. Either you isolate and remove those who deliberately imperil public safety, or you condone their behavior. There is no middle ground. Make your choice cricket, and I hope it is on the side of public safety.
chigau (違う) @81
Second the motion.
jezus
Stop using ‘tard’ as an insult.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/rules/
jezus
‘tard and variations thereon are considered slurs around here. You can agree or disagree, but it’s not relly up for discussion and using such insults is a violation of the rules of the blog, as determined by the actual owner. You’re not going to get far complaining about that.
And your condemnation of normal FAA obeying pilots is now legendary…Loser.
Either you condemn the excesses or you expect them. You expect them. Thanks for playing loser idjit.
Where is YOUR acknowledgment of that is what was said?
I have. It’s called Q7A, implemented by the FDA. There are NO exceptions. You apologies imply there are. Decide your side and live the consequences…Fines by the FDA. or deaths by pilot error. What the fuck IS YOUR PROBLEM?
And Jezus, until you worry more about getting rid of arrogant pilots who ignore FAA regs, than defending the pilots who obey regs, you come across as an apologist for bad behavior. Why can’t you see that simple concept????
jezus
“dick” is a gendered slur.
Don’t use it either.
Ah.
A fresh breeze.
Thank you, PZ.
I’m an airline pilot and host of http://www.askthepilot.com.
What I think is this:
I agree that the belligerent reaction to the Quartz story by some pilots was totally uncalled for and reflects badly on the profession.
I also feel that the story itself was ridiculous and needlessly provocative. Talk about making an issue out of nothing. There are rules, a few of which vary carrier to carrier, and I do not advocate that anybody violate them. But in my opinion there is no reason in the world why pilots should not be permitted to snap photographs during a non-critical phase of flight. I think that most people, even the people who enforce the rules, would agree with this, which is why little has been made of the tens, if not hundreds of thousands of cockpit photos that are out there on the Web. Heck, even ALPA, the pilots’ union, publishes pilot-submitted cockpit photos in its magazine, sometimes on the cover!
Some of the backlash was unprofessional. But for this supposed journalist to sensationalize what should be an utter non-story is also unprofessional.
Patrick Smith
That isn’t the argument. Landing and take-offs are critical times. What part of that are you ignoring. Everything to call the report bad, instead of fellow pilots being stupid.
I did call them stupid.
Now, I agree that taking photos during takeoff or landing is another issue, but the story didn’t make that distinction entirely clear. It blended photos taken during the enroute phase of flight with those taken in critical phases of flight.
(I attempted to edit my original comments above, but there is no option to do so.)
To the person who asked about whether landings were hands-on or automatic, there’s a discussion in my book about this.
http://www.askthepilot.com/cockpit-confidential-besteller/
The vast majority of landings are performed manually.
And there is no such thing, in any jetliner, as an automatic takeoff.