Tagged: Travel
It’s Pilot vs. System, and I Hope Pilot
I try to make things simple for my mom (not because of anything other than her desire to cut through the crap) after any aircraft crashes—especially if they are of the kind of aircraft or type of flying that I do. As most of you would know, this simplified rationale was again needed due to some recent crashes out west.
My effort was, “As dark as it sounds, if you want to know my thoughts, I hope we learn that ‘pilot error’ was the cause. That’s far easier to live with than the idea that one day the helicopter is just going to kill me.” The reader can see in this dichotomy the split that every pilot learns from the start of pilot training. Crashes are either pilot error or mechanical. And 80% of crashes are pilot error according to the data. It also makes sense. And it also keeps aviation functioning. Why would anyone want to hop into or fly an aircraft that cannot perform its function reliably?
After chatting with a couple mechanics recently, I was reminded that they bear the heavy cross of “I sure hope it wasn’t mechanical”. This coheres with other offhand comments aircraft mechanics have uttered over my career, being, “That’s what I lose sleep over.” These mechanics do not want to find that some unfinished or inept work of theirs got people killed.
There is a sense which the pilot and mechanic can be said to be “of a kind” on crashes then. They (we) both want flawless aircraft and flawed (if only very infrequently) pilots. But this is not what I meant when I simplified things to my mom.
The reason for the post, the complex version of my thoughts on the matter, is as follows. It isn’t simply man vs. machine. Or even man and machine. It is man and system. Or man vs. system. I mean to draw out that if the aircraft had a mechanical problem which the pilot was unable to handle, the “problem” that now needs to be addressed is enormous and multi-tiered. It’s a question of quality of engineers, quality of materials, quality of parts, quality of QC, quality of maintenance program, quality of individual mechanic who performed the work, and quality of pilot who preflighted (which also includes his or her training and all of the people and processes involved there). Depending on the mechanical failure, there is also a possible new data set regarding deficient training for the pilot regarding Emergency Procedures. A, “I didn’t know what to do because we never saw that fail before.” So all that is what I mean by “system” in my “pilot vs. system” framing. This is to say, no, it’s not just “mechanical”. It’s actually a ding against the whole aviation system.
On the other hand, if the pilot caused the crash, then there is just one pilot who didn’t perform his simple task of perform the same number of landings as takeoffs. And that can happen to any pilot for a variety of reasons—though, being the best pilot ever (best of the best to be more clear), it naturally won’t happen to me.
In the end, the result is the same. I believe in the aviation system. And I believe that I should be the pilot which demonstrates how the system is truly remarkable. This is why, when considering pilot’s who crash have families and are possibly injuring passengers who have families etc, I can admit that it would *feel* good to attribute the crash to, essentially, “fate” or anyone else’s fault, the simple fact is and will always be that part of the motivation to be a pilot is the consequential nature of the job. If I didn’t believe in the system and my ability to lead it, I wouldn’t strap the aircraft on time and time again.
PS – Even the Huntington Beach one which YouTube seems to show was a pure part failure (‘system’ according to my point) can’t yet be chalked up to “system”. We do not yet know if the system failed or the pilot didn’t perform an adequate preflight and forms review etc.
Pilots—Hope Embodied
I’m at work today and was chatting with the mechanic. It got me thinking.
Man, this job sure requires me to place a lot of trust in other people.
This led to me wondering What makes someone want to be an aircraft mechanic?
This led to I sure hope the answer is ‘not being as brave or good-looking’ as pilots.
But I backed off that and landed on Flying the aircraft requires more trust in other people than mechanics usually possess.
There are surely other measures of trust or, more broadly, hope. But what I mean to call attention to is the why behind the quality of the trait that pilots necessarily possess.
Once considered, I say one must conclude that it isn’t merely the mode of travel, but the fact of travel that betrays the pilot’s special embodiment of hope. From the functioning of the aircraft, to the people at the (planned or unplanned) destination not killing you upon arrival, the pilot embodies hope.
From another angle, consider that Mark Twain said, “Travel is fatal to prejuidce, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.”
That’s got all the right words, but it’s backwards. From where I sit, “Prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness are fatal to travel.”
But, of course, by travel I mean more than the movement of the body from one location to another. I count as travel learning—even via books. I count attending different cultures’ events (ie, Chinamen moving to Chinatown is not travel, but one religious Chinaman’s visiting of a different religion’s Chinaman family—all who live in the same apartment building is) as travel. There are probably other meanings I would count.
Or not.
So I only mean three things count as travel. (1) travel, (2) learning, and (3) dually (i) meeting people who look identical to yourself but are, in fact, not you and (ii) meeting people who look nothing like you and finding out they are, in fact, your identical twin. And the connection which binds these three is not travel, but hope.
Do you see?
On Indian Plane Crash Preliminary Report
I figure faithful readers might be curious what their pilot blogger thinks about the recently published findings about the airline disaster in India.
In short, the findings are: according to cockpit recordings, one of the two pilots looked down and saw a fuel switch “off” when it should’ve been “on”. (For reference/context my helicopter doesn’t have such a switch—there is a cutoff lever for stop fuel flow during fires, but digital technology keeps the engine going.)
That pilot says (paraphrase), “Why did you cutoff the fuel?” The other pilot answers, “I didn’t.”
They then attempted to fix the situation and didn’t have time.
When boys are freely being boys, there is a game/mentality where you do the “wrong” thing as you blame it on the other person. Like, the older brother grabbing his younger brother’s hand and using it against him while saying, “Stop hitting yourself! Stop hitting yourself!” It’s hilarious.
That is the way I perceive these facts, as presented.
Also for reference, the USAF teaches, regarding field of “switchology”, that in crew aircraft (and I will often do it still by myself) the best practices included stating, “I have identified the xx switch.” Followed by, “I am placing the switch in the xx position.” Put militarily, “No fast hands in the cockpit.”
It is very difficult for me to imagine that the “I didn’t” pilot was lying. And a mistaken action during this “critical phase of flight” is just as difficult. So my experience tells me the inquisitor flipped it (for probably forever mysterious reasons) and then caused confusion by “Why did YOU do that?” questioning, for whatever other forever mysterious reasons.
To be clear, the switch has a feature which requires the pilot (or anyone) to first it pull up and then flip it. This mechanical feature was designed so that it/critical-switches cannot be “bumped” accidentally.
Now you know. I wish I could provide better consolation.
The Good Fallout From The Space Bimbos’ Expensive Selfie
Before they had their fun, would you have been aware that there is a formal program called, “Commercial Space Astronaut Wings Program”? I hadn’t given it much thought, as on this topic I am generally awestruck immobile by yet another instance of uncanny synchronization of unrelated technology jumps. Can someone please explain how virtually every human being is able to view, in stunning HD, videos of the now weekly commercial rocket launches? Using Resurrection Sunday as a backdrop, we might say that it seems like physicists care more about letting others watch their work than religious zealots ever did.
I digress.
Regarding “astronaut” more broadly, it was always obvious to me what this meant, because as a former USAF pilot, I went to training with a guy that had a career goal to become an astronaut. Given my then (and still) adoration of AF pilots, his goal didn’t seem out of reach—indeed he seemed to be completing the exact right steps at the exact right time. If anything, I learned that I would never be an astronaut because I hadn’t even believed I was in the running until, after meeting him, I considered that if I was in the same training as him, surely I was at least had better chances than everyone else not in USAF pilot training.
So the definition for Commercial Space Astronaut Wings Program is: “Crewmembers who travel into space must have ‘demonstrated activities during flight that were essential to public safety or contributed to human space flight safety.’”
And that is still pretty weak as definitions go, imho. (And the bimbos would, under the most generous definition of “human space flight safety”, need to say, “I earned my Commercial Space Astronaut Wings!” Under no circumstance does the English language allow for them to be called Astronauts.)
But now we know. And that is a good thing.
Without Hesitation, I Pointed
I’ve had a short car ride to consider the matter and I have resolved that, next time, I will simply step out of line, open the luggage, and begin to rifle through the contents until you people learn.
But this morning, all I did was admit to myself that if it was a bomb, if today was the end, then I’d rather go out without panicking or making anyone else panic. And I was so close to the left-alone-luggage that I was actually happy that it would probably be instant, painless death, instead of painful injury, followed by opioid-addict life.
Truth be told, I only treated the situation as terrorist-dramatic because I like to test myself. Sure, the lady who just decided to stop pulling her carry-on right next to the 40-min long TSA security line was BIPOC, brown to be exact. I’d guess from India. Huge strike against her, and for travel terrorism. But she had a child with her. And she clearly was pissed at her husband. He was—somehow—the one lagging on the trip through the airport. In my experience, men usually drag their wives. But given the end of the holiday weekend, and given the packed nature of the airport, all I guessed was that she was doing the classic dumb-wife move of being mad that they might miss their flight (perhaps it was even his fault) and then compounding that anger with the fact that her husband was not reacting with the emotional interest that she expected. When exactly did remaining calm become an undesirable quality?
Anyhow, taken together, I was not afraid, but I was shocked. Dumbfounded. Who is left on this planet that is stupid enough to walk away from a piece of luggage at an airport?
That’s why I say that next time I will just attempt to shame the person by exposing their messy undergarments to the general public. If they haven’t learned nicely, then shame is the only remaining tool, in my book.
Today, however, I was consoling H- who, when we reached the “end” of the security line and discovered it was double-wrapped in a way we had not experienced before, had begun to cry. Despite my later-proved-to-be-accurate claim that “we’ll be at the gate before they even begin boarding,” I couldn’t prevent the water works.
Anyhow, that is what distracted me from going the “open-luggage-to-shame” route, and instead just notice it—notice it and focus unrelentingly until a worker came by shouting instructions for the line who then added, “Whose is this?” All I could do was point. But I pointed with a force that said, “That dumb mother fucker over there.” Then I laughed to myself and low-talked to H-, “I pointed! Ha. Didn’t even blink. Just dimed them out. Funny.”
Guess maybe I, too, was getting tired of watching a woman make stupid decisions after a long holiday weekend with one.
Oh well. At least you and I are ready for next time.
Don’t wait. Find out for yourself if it’s a bomb.
You’re Afraid of Women? Me Too!
Especially after my last two posts full of heroic bravado, I know my female faithful are longing to know what it’s really like to be my bride. Well, as luck would have it, I feel like pulling back the curtain a bit. The following back and forth occurred on the drive to see some houses. As expected, I lead. Enjoy!
****
“I’m just saying that I don’t think ‘how old a house is’ should automatically disqualify it.”
“All I think about is how much everything is going to break and any money that we save we will spend on fixing it.”
“Every house needs repairs. To me, and this may just be me, the key is having money for those repairs. Sure we could probably afford a slightly newer house, but we’d be signing on to not having that extra few hundred dollars every single month for the next 30 years.”
“I just want a nice house.”
“I know you do, Honey. Me, too. I just feel like you’re not seeing things the best way. So I’m going to keep trying to paint the picture I see.”
“I just would like a nice house.”
“I’m not saying we’re not getting a nice house. I’m mostly just saying we need to stick to a budget. That’s a good idea, right?”
“If we buy a house that’s one hundred years old, and then we need to sell it fast, who’s going to buy it?”
“We don’t know the future no matter what. We didn’t think we’d be moving again just three months ago. I don’t think the future should weigh so heavily in the decision.”
“You’re not understanding me.”
“That may be. But I am asking you to try harder to explain yourself then. (breath) The way I see it, even if you’re right–and we buy an old house and are stuck with it–it’s better to be stuck with a small mortgage payment, than a big one, no?”
“That kitchen was very small.”
“And I feel like I can imagine how knocking out one part of one of the walls would make it feel bigger.”
“But-”
“-And, sorry, I have a philosophy that small is better anyhow. In the future, there will be more people crowding together in that kitchen than in a big kitchen, I promise. I can’t explain it, but I have seen it. In my last house, it was small and I could fill it with people. Other houses I’ve been in weren’t like that. I can see the full, noisy kitchen now. There’ll be twenty of you in that little area chatting away and interrupting each other, saying, ‘Excuse me!’ ‘Pardon me!’ ‘Ha, where’d the … go?’ Everyone will love it.”
(Here, reader, I think it’s better to spend your time imagining the look I felt being cast upon me, than read any feeble description of it.)
“No? Well, I’m right. But I’ll try another way. How’s this? When you say you want a nice and big kitchen, what I hear is that you’d rather spend three hundred dollars per month to look at a kitchen, than on anything else. Is that what you’re saying? Would you say it like that? ‘I’d rather spend money to be in a kitchen than on shoes or clothes or A-‘s education or vacations?’ Is that what you’re telling me? If so, that’s easy. I agree. Let’s do it. But then you can’t complain in the future.”
“Did you just say that to me?”
“(Here see laughter coming out of my big, beautiful smile as I shake my head.) That’s not wrong to say. It’s helpful to say. It helps us communicate because as of this moment I still can’t figure out what the problem is. The way I see it, we have to pay a certain amount of money to live in a building. And anything above that is not smart. Why pay more than the minimum? I’m talking about flexibility. Sure, if we get an old house, it may have more problems. But as they come, we have options. We can fix them immediately. Or maybe never. Or sometime in between. But all the while, we can choose and rank how important every other thing is.”
“The bathtub was very short.”
“Let me put it this way. Would you rather have $300 a month or no money a month?”
“$300.”
“Then I win. I’m telling you that if we stick to the budget and get an older house, which perhaps will need more repairs, we will have $300 a month extra to spend on whatever we want.”
(Silence)
“What if I put it this way? What I’m saying is, if we get an old house, within budget, then every month you can go to the store and buy anything you want.”
****
Here, careful reader, the flaw in husbands and wives trying to talk to make decisions together manifests itself fully. The following questions remain:
Did my heroic, strong, brave, and incredibly intelligent self just get worn down to promising a blank check to my wife?
Was this her aim the entire time?
Did I, in fact, promise it? Follow-up: And, if so, am I bound to keep that promise?
These questions and more are now staring me in the face as I proceed down the path only found by those seeking marital bliss.
Attention Professional Journalists: Let’s Chat About the Crash
My aim here is to give you the good stuff, the thoughts of a professional helicopter pilot who had to go to work the next day. Most of the following is criticism of your reporting of the crash, not my speculation about the crash. Listen up. You’ll learn a lot.
To begin, you journalists are doing a great disservice to language and how it works (not to mention your reputation) during your reporting. For example, the word “special” in, “He was on a special VFR clearance,” is nothing like “special” in, “Kobe was a special basketball superstar.” In other words, on any given day, every pilot in the sky could simultaneously be on a “special VFR clearance”.
Secondly, after completing every paragraph, reread it and ask yourself, “Is there anything in here which betrays that I have a complete misunderstanding of all things aviation?” If you answer affirmatively on any level, rewrite it. Specifically, pilots don’t ask for “flight following” because they are worried. When I’m worried, I hold my breath, I pace, I shake my head, I purse my lips, I mutter to myself, and I probably do a few other things of which I’m not even aware, too–no different than you. “Flight following” is meaningfully on the same level of flight safety as learning how to fly from someone else before flying solo. It’s absolutely unremarkable.
Thirdly, flying has so much drama inherent to it, or so much “organic” drama, that if you find yourself needing to add some, then you’re clearly not writing about flying. For instance, “Too low for flight following,” (Oooh!) has nothing to do with safety and everything to do with the capabilities of the sending and receiving technologies which have been tasked with “following” the flight. In other words, in Iraq, we routinely flew at 100 ft above the ground. This is much lower than Kobe’s flight, and yet our Operations Centers knew exactly where we were every second we were there.
Fourthly, reread your articles for general common sense blunders. Particularly ridiculous are your claims about the differences between IFR and VFR flying. To be clear, whether flying under “Instrument Flight Rules” or “Visual Flight Rules”, whether flying in clouds (fog is just a cloud at the Earth’s surface), whether flying under clouds, whether flying over clouds, or whether flying in skies totally free of clouds, all pilots fly by eyesight.
Do you copy? You’re not doing your job responsibly when you’re not doing your research or using your brain. Admit when you don’t know what you’re writing about. You’re embarrassing yourself.
What caused the crash? Poor judgement. Bad decision making. At some level, once removed, the weather can be called a factor. But clouds are merely invisible gaseous water vapor that has condensed into visible liquid water. They cause daydreams; they are the outward cause of lightning and its thunder. The condensation can occur strongly enough to cause itself to fall to the earth as precipitation. But clouds do not cause pilots to crash.
Pilots cause pilots to crash.
We know that.
That’s why we’re so special.
The Hood
“Well where’s the hood?” he asked.
“The hood?” H- replied in kind.
“Which side is the hood facing?” he repeated.
The father-daughter duo were back in the tent from an early morning bathroom run. H- had really needed to go.
“Yeah, on good sleeping bags like yours they put a hood where your head goes for when it is super cold,” he explained.
With wide eyes and delicate hands she proceeded to maneuver the sleeping bag around until she thought it matched her father’s words.
“Good,” he confirmed. “Now get in like normal,” he suggested. “That’s right. Now-”
H- needed no further instruction. Once in, she pressed her head up against the top of the hood and pulled down on the sides, experiencing that sensation which must fall within the bounds of what more studied men call pure delight. Soon, no longer seen by H-, he observed that she had let the hood fall over her eyes all the way down to the tip of her nose. After she fiddled with the drawstring she carefully exposed her finger from within the bag once more, this time to touch her nostrils.
“What are you doing?” he inquired, chuckling to himself.
“What?” she feigned.
“Were you just checking to see if you could still breathe out of your nose?”
A pause–probably much longer for the girl in the dark.
“Yeah.”
Review of Sam Neill’s Velociraptor Speech in the first Jurassic Park
Click here if you need your memory jogged.
Or read these two snippets.
“You stare at him, and he just stares right back. And that’s when the attack comes. Not from the front, but from the side, from the other two ‘raptors you didn’t even know were there.”
“The point is… you are alive when they start to eat you. So you know… try to show a little respect.”
Do you remember how surprised you were to learn that the ever mysterious and enchanting king of the dinosaurs T-Rex’s visual acuity was based on movement, as “Oh Alan” describes? What an intriguing revelation that was. And then in the time it took for Sam Neill’s index fingers to swing from his side to his front, within that instant, a previously unknown dinosaur severed any remaining connection our minds had with any reality outside the film. From that moment, unlike the annoying kid who has had enough velociraptor for a lifetime, we found ourselves thirsting for them. Like Dana Delany’s head-straightening declaration “I want one” after hearing Billy Zane’s thespianic description of a quintessential cowboy while marveling at a distant, lean-silhouetted Wyatt Earp upon arriving in Tombstone, we wanted velociraptors. And Jurassic Park gave them to us. And to prove how much we wanted them, we set the Memorial Day weekend box office record as we paid to to see the sequel, The Lost World, way back then. Remember that? It’s true.
But the filmmakers failed us in the sequel. They had a little girl gymnastic-kick our beloved.
And then in number three, a velociraptor spoke English.
Last weekend, however, Sam Neill’s speech was back in the forefront as a new box-office record was set by the head-bobbing six-foot turkeys. Why? Why did we rush to see it? Because the previews and movie posters teased us with the idea that we’d get to see what it would be like to have our very own velociraptors. Velociraptors as pets. Awesome.
All because of Sam Neill. Nice work, Sam.
Mildly Depressing Information About WordPress Blogging – Part 1
Almost from the day I began this blog I had my suspicions about the integrity of the likes/follows my blog was getting, but last Thanksgiving was definitely the turning point. I’m sure that like many of you, I couldn’t help but notice that my posts often got a “like” plus “follow” by another blogger within moments of publishing my newest post. Blinded by the promise of fortune and fame, I would check out the culprit’s blog and see if I thought they were a discerning reader or a machine. More often than not, I allowed myself to believe they were a discerning reader and that their “like” meant that I had published something valuable.
Then came last Thanksgiving. I had been blogging fairly regularly for about one and a half years, and beginning in early 2014 it seemed that this blog was finally gaining some traction with “readers”. Letting myself succumb to the holiday spirit, I decided to write a post “thanking” all the “likers” that, in part, motivated me to keep writing. Of particular note was one particular blogger. She had tens of thousands of followers (30K+ as of today) and yet was liking my blog posts regularly. It felt so good to see that she was reading and liking my writing. I really wanted to throw some blog-love her way (and others) and so I began my thankful post with her name. Surely she would notice this, I thought. I named some thirteen other bloggers (see the post here) before moving to the names of real people that I knew were reading nearly every post–friends and family.
Guess what happened?
Not a single one of those bloggers “liked” the post.
I mentioned this to my sister and she said, “Maybe they don’t like being called out?” Maybe. But no. It soon became clear that the reason they didn’t like my post was it was Thanksgiving–a holiday. And unlike me, they didn’t get on their laptop that day. They didn’t go to their WordPress Reader and click “like” on some dude’s post in an effort to gain a follower.
Another example of this disingenuous tactic was a blogger that has since disappeared. He jumped from 1200 to 4000+ followers in no time. Yet he took the time to read (so I thought) and “like” my posts day after day after day. But I would never “follow” his blog. I’d “like” some of his posts, but it’s like I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of following his blog, so I didn’t. Finally he wore me down. So I clicked “follow”.
Guess what happened?
You got it. No more “likes” from him.
But it looked so cool that these blogs had thousands and thousands of followers. I wanted my blog to be that cool. It wasn’t. I had been writing for a year and a half. I had published about 300 well-written, engaging, strongly/uniquely-voiced posts and had around 400 followers heading into last December. Remember, I quit my job and was determined to write two books and keep blogging Monday-Friday at this point in time. I also decided while I wasn’t working that I would use the time to gain as many followers as I could by whatever methods were available. (“If you ain’t cheatin’, you ain’t tryin'” as we said in the Air Force.) Being a doggedly determined guy who still held onto a fool’s hope that blog-followers would eventually become book-buyers, I gained 1400 followers between mid-December and late January (six weeks).
Tomorrow I will share how I did it so that you can too, not that you’ll want to. Tomorrow, I will also demonstrate unequivocally why you should learn to honestly stop caring about likes/follows. Tomorrow, I will unapologetically pull back the WordPress curtain.
Captain’s Log 