The Next Chapter

When has an aviation disaster so changed an entire nation?

The world is asking “What next for Poland?”

No answers now, only questions. Only time will tell.

The speaker of the lower house of parliament, Bronislaw Komorowski will get the ball rolling on presidential elections that will come early.

Piotr Wiesiolek, a Central Bank deputy governor will temporarily assume the governorship.

No crystal ball is needed to know that the next hierarchy will sort itself out after the crash of Polish politics. Whether the cream will rise to the top or mediocrity stand-in until a new equilibrium surfaces, the dynamics of the Polish political machines will adapt. That in itself is nothing new. Everything changes; it is the way of the world.

It is not possible now or even fair to say that Poland will heal. Healing is not always an accurate word. What is meant, perhaps, is scab over, or scar, bearing in mind that how a scar heals determines if it remains a weakness, or becomes stronger than ever. There will be a time in which to convalesce. It is too soon, possibly even a cruelty– to speak of recovery now. The country needs time. Poland will endure as anyone does who has suffered tragedy, but eventually it will recoup its losses. Now is not the time to speak of the buoyancy of the human spirit, but to walk through the stages of mourning, and for other countries—without intrusion—like siblings, lend their strength where they can. Words can mean little now, but the free world shares in the mourning of the Polish people.

In the sixties, Dr. Kubler-Ross postulated five stages of grief: denial and isolation, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance; but I prefer the more recent model of seven stages which adds at the end, reconstruction and hope.

Poland will eventually be all right. Not without scars, of course but however dim it seems now, there will be a light at the end of the tunnel.

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    A Small Point about the NTSB and Investigations

    We’d like to remind people that NTSB investigations take a year or more.

    We post news as it comes. The media being what it is, we hope everyone that reads our posts realizes that tertiary sources gleaned through the media are speculative at best. This speculation, published or not, does not compare in merit to NTSB investigations that take a year or more, and are examined with a fine-toothed comb in order to determine causes and consequences.

    While the inexperience of the Asiana Crash on this particular plane at this particular airport may be a contributory cause, there may also be underlying causes that were behind autopilot being switched off, or the speed decreasing enough to cause a stick-shaker alert.

    See a Boeing 777 stick shaker test below:

    The NTSB has an extensive description of the investigative processes here:

    http://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/process.html

    Obviously, the brief summation of news teams and even witnesses can not compare to the depth and breadth of the official investigation.

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    As famílias da TAM, três anos depois.

    As famílias da TAM, três anos depois.

    Às famílias que agora rememoram a tragédia com o voo JJ 3054 da TAM Linhas Aéreas – o Airbus A320 que se chocou ao pousar em uma noite chuvosa, em uma pista com problemas de pavimentação, em 17 de julho de 2007…

    Às famílias, muitas das quais são amigas minhas…

    Este mês de julho não pode passar sem que relembremos. Assim como cada primavera faz lembrar o inverno, e cada noite faz lembrar o dia, em17 de julho, nós lembramos.

    Espero que, a essa altura, vocês tenham criado algum tipo de tradição que ajude a família a se reunir e lembrar.

    É um privilégio recordar toda a virtude de suas vidas – quer visitando seu túmulo, acendendo uma vela, plantando uma árvore ou realizando atos de bondade em sua memória.

    Vela alguma brilha o suficiente ou por tempo o bastante; arvore alguma se ergue suficientemente alta ou dá sombra o bastante; nenhum ato de caridade é suficientemente generoso. Mas, ainda assim, fazer algo a cada ano que nos ajude a realmente lembrá-los traz em si um ato de vida. Fazê-lo traz a chama da lembrança, entrelaçando o ontem ao presente e ao amanhã.

    Um ritual que, a princípio, pode funcionar como uma muleta emocional, mas tarde dá asas à nossa alma. Um ritual que nos faz lembrar que cada vida é como uma pedra em um monumento, um alicerce que sustenta a todos nós que seguimos em frente.

    Que a perda não seja em vão.

    Lágrimas não nos podem devolver o ser amado, mas espero que o tempo tenha trazido cura e alívio para a dor, deixando apenas a ternura da lembrança.

    Amigos e amigas, celebrem a memória.

    George Hatcher

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  • Air France: Frozen Air Speed Indicator?

    George’s Point of View

    Yet another theory:

    Problems with airspeed indicators led to excessive speed for the Air France A330, triggering the sequence of events leading to the crash. Blame it on pitot tubes. If the pitot tubes froze up during the storm, pilots would get mis-readings on their speed, accelerate, and subject the plane to stresses the structure was unable to withstand.

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  • Getting Past Indifference

    In George’s Point of View

    When we are working on a case trying to get compensation for victims of a crash, we find that the court relies on friends and family to paint a picture of who the victim was, and how they used to fit in the world. Of course we all know that every human being is priceless; but it is the court’s duty oftentimes to put a numeric value on a person for the sake of compensation. Some courts can be remarkably indifferent to individuals. I was reminded of that truism when reading the word-pictures rendered by the boyfriend of one of the Kazan Airport Crash victims, Yana Baranova …” an incredibly focused and mature businesswoman. Her colleagues describe her as a “rising star” of their industry, and her drive would have doubtless carried her beyond her own expectations….” He barely glances over this description of her, but in his words, we do see the snapshot of a vital young woman lost in her prime.

    Yana’s boyfriend is unaccustomed to dealing with the Russian bureaucracy, and refers to “indifference and a lack of surprise boarding on apathy” and officials who write off that attitude with “This is Russia.” As this young man notes, my experience too has been that Russian courts that can be apathetic.

    It is true that the opposite of love is not hate; it is apathy. Elie Wiesel said that, and it is true. Apathy is the callus that has formed—like a healed blister over an injury— thickened, hardened, insensitive tissue formed over a wound to protect it. Over time, it may become expedient for an official not to stop and feel the pain, but it is a tragedy when that happens. Something of humanity is lost. When dealing with government and the courts, one has to remember that they have seen it all, not once but a hundred, a thousand times. Their souls are probably more blistered than your worst blistered feet in new shoes with no socks, worn day after day, in grueling conditions. No wonder they are calloused, insensitive, even hard. It is a grievous fact that too often robes of government, of jurisprudence, which should be worn to empower and embrace the rights of man and the rule of justice are often worn as shields and blades against the individual. For the law to work at its best, it should be objective, but never sacrifice sensitivity to the victims, or the families of the victims.

    Sometimes it is up to our lawyers to remind the courts that the best and brightest of the legal profession went into the field because they were idealists who love the law; who stepped into their professions because they wanted to spearhead change for good, rights of man; who probably had specific agendas where they wanted to affect change; who believed they would be more effective than they are; who ran into barrier after barrier and who may have given up; who may have substituted apathy for the appearance of objectivity.

    After consulting for forty years on a huge variety of cases, maybe I haven’t seen it all, but I’ve come pretty close. I can’t claim to have a crystal ball, but there’s not a whole lot that surprises me. I’ve developed a pretty good instinct about where and when courts go left instead of right.

    In the US, our “rights-based” ethics system means that we all have the right to be treated as equal to others. Other countries may have “utilitarian ethics based on “good outcomes” vs “bad outcomes”, often with the rights of the individual getting crunched somewhere under the wheels of the system.

    We can only hope to do our best to represent the individuals who were lost. We can only do our best to remind those who sit in judgement that underneath the armor and callouses we all wear to protect ourselves from being fragile in the face of all the storms of life, that we are all human, all deserving of hope, concern, and ethical treatment.

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  • |

    Selling Safety Classes for Sitting Ducks


    In George’s Point of View


    When I get on a plane, I plan on being safe. I don’t fly “unsafe” airways.

    If I didn’t believe I was going to be safe on a plane, I wouldn’t get on it. It should go without saying. Most people probably feel that way, except for the ones stuck in countries whose airlines are on the EU banned list.

    But apparently, British Airways isn’t so confident. They are offering a four hour class in how to crash. That is, they are going to charge passengers to teach them how they want passengers to behave in a crash, to increase their likelihood of survival.

    Excuse me? This is not like a Drunk Driving class where the driver, the one in control of the vehicle, is being taught something. These are passengers, stuck in a flying sardine can, strapped into their seats. There’s not a whole lot passengers can do but sit there. Beyond that little sideshow performance by the attendants before every flight, other than avoiding hysteria, what else can passengers do? Flap their wings?

    I am on the fence about whether or not such a course is a good idea. On one hand, I can picture a poll taken by airline patrons who have written in their own question, asking what to do in case of a crash.

    Pray.

    Maybe flight attendants just get tired of answering that question, “What can we really do to survive, if we crash?” They probably hear it frequently. Maybe someone asked Sully, and Sully said, “Be calm.”

    In most cases who survives a plane crash has a lot to do with age. When there is one single survivor, it is usually a child, and I don’t think there’s anything that a class offered by British Airways can teach to make anyone younger. There are seats that may be marginally safer depending on how the plane crashes, but everyone can’t sit in them. That would cause a plane crash. (It reminds me of a recent crash of a plane where some smuggled creatures escaped their confines, scared everyone from one side of a small plane to the other, and of course, it got off balance and crashed.)

    I can also picture a boardroom with a bunch of accounting types trying to figure out new revenue streams. They ask themselves what do passengers want?

    The answer? To get to their destination in one piece.

    But they’re already selling them tickets. What else can they do to squeeze the market? I mean, what else can they do to make the passengers happy?

    “Eureka!” one of them shouts, “Let’s offer plane crash safety classes.” Maybe this one means well at the time. Maybe when he suggests it, he thinks it should be free. Or maybe he is just hoping his shiftless out-of-work brother-in-law could get hired by British Airlines to teach the classes, so he’ll move out of the spare bedroom.

    So in that imaginary planning meeting I referenced before, the British Airways guy with the calculator says “And charge them for it!”

    Their documentation says that British Airways believes a class will “make passengers safer…by giving additional skills and information.”

    Does this mean they are withholding information that would make passengers safer?

    If there’s something new or special that should be taught about living through a flight, (people, consider that I am writing this article while ON a slow plane from China,) then this is something EVERY passenger must know, and it must be included in the price of the ticket.

    The whole scheme of this class seems problematic to me. We passengers are already buying your tickets. Charging us to make us safer on your flight…that seems not only hypocritical, it seems like the ultimate in avariciousness.

    What are you going to do next if a plane crashes? Make the people who didn’t take the class leave the plane last? Do they get to die first?

    The announcement indicates that this program was developed for BP staff who regularly end up on EU banned list flights on planes that skydivers wouldn’t touch with a ten foot parachute. Maybe the class really just scares people off of those banned airlines, and onto British Airways planes, which are more expensive but a heck of a lot more likely to get you there intact than an airline that doesn’t pass the EU safety criteria.

    Anyway, British Airways, if you’re listening, this is not just a product that you got stuck with to make some money from. This is something you should be offering to all your passengers, for free. Have some stars (Tom Cruise reprising his Top Gun role, Meg Ryan reprising her aerophobic character in French Kiss, or maybe the cast of that new Pan Am series.)

    Record the class. Give it out as a DVD with the tickets. Sometimes you have to put away the calculator.

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  • Sleeping or Surfing at 10,000 feet

    George’s Point of View

    Can’t phone while driving, can’t text while driving, can’t drink while driving. What next? For pilots, don’t surf while flying. No federal rules specifically ban pilots’ use of laptops or other personal electronic devices above 10,000 feet, but Delta does have just such a policy.

    I know the Internet can be engrossing. I’ve logged on for one minute and looked up 2 or 3 hours later, but I wasn’t driving—or flying a plane—when I did it.

    Delta has suspended Richard Cole and Timothy Cheney, the pilots who overshot their destination by 150 miles.

    Would it have been better if they’d been sleeping?

    You may be surprised that in some places, it is allowed for pilots to sleep while flying. Pilot Antonio De Biasi provided me this little tidbit of information:

    International carriers including former Varig, Air France, British Airways and Qantas allow pilots to nap, but sleeping while flying is prohibited at U.S. airlines by the FAA. Just last month, the Air Transport Association again pressed the FAA to allow controlled cockpit napping, citing NASA research that found a mid-flight snooze significantly reduces the risks of overall pilot fatigue.

    The NASA study begun in 1989 and allowed one group of pilots flying across the Pacific to take a 25-minute nap while their co-pilots flew the planes, while a control group was required to remain awake for the entire flight. Those without the naps nodded off five times as much – including while on the approach to the airport – as those who got some sleep.

    What is scary to me is the finding that pilots without naps nodded off five times as frequently as those who slept. If this was a blind study, those same ratios may be true for all pilots flying across the Pacific. Pilots nodding off may not be that unusual. That’s disturbing enough for me to want to bring an air horn on my next flight, just to honk it at regular intervals or whenever the captain is not a chatty sort.

    Sleeping and surfing on the job: neither are illegal, at least, not yet, anyway.

    And I am sure that I’m not the only passenger who wants the only law I want my pilots breaking to be the law of gravity.

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