George’s Point of View

Let me present you with a theoretical construct. Let me present you with a horse, and his rider. Let me introduce the horse, who at the beginning of this construct, is already dead. The horse in our fabrication, sadly, has already been ridden to death. And having fallen, the horse is reviled. His good reputation is being fouled, and he is no longer able to defend himself.

And here is the question I mean to ask you:

When you ride a horse to death, whose fault is it? Is it the fault of the horse, who has no choice but to do what he does? Is it the fault of the rider who drives the horse on? Any reasonable person would blame the rider, and rightly so. It is the rider who wields the crop, that drives the horse on when it would rest. The horse is just being a horse. Perhaps we might wonder why: why is the rider such a taskmaster? Is there some great cause involved? Is there some life or lives at stake? Is there a just cause that forces the rider to set such grueling standards?

But I am getting ahead of myself. Putting the cart before the horse, if you’ll pardon the pun.

Let me explain something unique about our horse. Our horse is not an ordinary horse; he is in a unique situation. He had a certain degree of choice. He had other options. He could, perhaps, have chosen to be a cow, or a rabbit. But his essential nature, his learning, his history, his hopes and dreams–they were the learning, history, hopes and dreams of a horse–a whole life lived to one pursuit of being a horse. This horse is a horse, I should say WAS a horse, because he wanted to be. So when he was asked to perform as a horse, he did. Even though the demands that were put on him were exhausting. Even though the scheduling was unreasonable. He was a horse working longer hours, with less rest than he needed, and he paid the price.

So let us turn back to the rider. Why did the rider push so hard? Why is it the horse’s fault for falling to exhaustion, and not the rider’s fault, for driving him to it?

In fact, look at the rider now—he’s back on another horse, riding this one just as hard. In fact, riding many horses, all driven to the same point of exhaustion. And there will be more horses falling, failing. It is inevitable.

So, why is this rider pushing so hard?

It always comes down to money. For the rider, having fewer horses is more cost effective. For the rider, horses are cheap. If one drops, who cares? There are many more where he came from. Why should the rider cater to the demands of the horse–so what if the horse would like shorter hours, better pay? If he wants to be a horse, he has to work like a horse, period.

In fact, the rider could sponsor many more pilots, I mean, horses, divide the work load so that the ratio of work to worker was a reasonable load. But that option is not in the picture.

I am guessing that you have figured out that I am not speaking about horses at all. I am speaking of fallen pilots. In fact, one pilot in particular, Zlatko Glusica, the Air India pilot who was in the cockpit of the Air India Express flight that crashed and killed 158 passengers. Reputations—his and that of his copilot—are being tarred, feathered and dragged through the mud. But the pilots were not alone in that fatal cockpit. There was a third seat, occupied by fatigue, and that third seat was put there by Air India policy.

George’s Point of View

On this blog here, we are in the practice of posting quick news as we find it–the who, what, where, when, why of it all. Details are compressed so that we can present that quick notification of what just happened; and frequently, even the (minimum of two) news sources behind our reports do not agree.

Technically, the reality of any event could be compressed into such a quick format, because there is an ultimate truth which exists. But, it takes years for investigators to get to that ultimate truth. And when it does happen, the “why” is not going to be a single line or paragraph. It is going to be composed of hundreds of pages of documentation of all the facts that are revealed in the course of investigation.

Investigation is a painstaking process at best even if the accidents occur with witnesses and are recorded on video tape and multiple media perspectives such as the the black boxes. (And many times those records do not exist or are lost.) The investigative teams look at the obvious records, and then they go through the wreckage with a fine-toothed comb, examining concrete evidence, and use this evidence to put together the most accurate reconstruction of events possible. And frequently there are opposing perspectives of how something happened. Sometimes of the actual facts of the incident, only a partial percentage of concrete evidence is found; and sometimes it takes months or years to surface. When a new piece of evidence does surface, the entire conclusion may end up revised. (Think of the of the Titanic disaster which occurred in 1912 whose initial investigation closed that same year; and whose rediscovery in 1985, lead to a reinvestigation which actually begun in 1994, and salvage beginning in 1995.) Thus the investigative process can take an indeterminate length of time.

So we do apologize to our readers for putting anything at all in the “why” area of our records, because we well know that the why and how of what happened is simply not going to be concluded for a long, long time. We hope that it is understood that our presentation of the “why” is a cursory summary at best, but that the final conclusion that will be years in coming is the result of conscientious, painstaking, scrupulous investigation by seasoned experts.

At Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris, the memorial dedicated to the victims of flight 447 will have its grand opening. Family members of those lost in the crash are invited.

Sometimes Air France displays a disturbing lack of propriety, even when they’re doing their public best to appear sensitive and thoughtful.

Case in point: Generously, Air France provided tickets to the family members of the victims of Flight 447 , the flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, that final notorious, fatal flight which disappeared into the Atlantic Ocean on 1 June 2009, killing all 216 passengers and 12 crew members.

Guess which flight Air France put the grieving families on? Flight AF445 on an Airbus aircraft–it is, in fact, exactly the same flight as the one which killed their family members. (“447” was discontinued; “445” is the current designation for the same flight.)

The victim association is intending to rebook on Boeing flights.

It’s difficult to figure out, impartially, what is going on in the heads of Air France management. Are they deliberately ignoring the 400 lb gorilla in the room? (Actually, they’re planning to replace the 400 lb gorilla—the Airbus A330-200— with an even bigger model, the A340. Essentially replacing the 400 lb gorilla with a 500 lb gorilla… but I digress.)

Meanwhile, the families agonize over the details: would the plane have crashed if the pitot tubes had been replaced with another model? Or if the pitot tubes had been maintained properly? And how can Air France possibly expect them to set foot on a plane–especially the same flight as the one that carried their family members to their deaths?

Bombardier is promising their new C series planes will “cut greenhouse gas emissions, ensure substantial fuel savings and be four times quieter .”

Let’s hope all these cuts don’t also sacrifice safety along with heavier materials. As far as safety is concerned, will the new planes made of “lightweight composite and aluminum lithium materials, built to accommodate stricter environmental standards and” well-built airplane(s) … capable of withstanding turbulence” be sacrificing the safety of sturdier construction and time-tested safety features to reach optimistically green standards?

How will these new lighter planes fare when subjected to unexpected turbulence, which is commonplace in realistic day to day flying conditions? I have no answers, only questions.