Site Presented By
Tuesday, Nov 24, 2009
If an airline declares bankruptcy and its mechanics go on strike, is it safe to fly?
Oct 28, 2005 | That clearly audible thud heard yesterday afternoon throughout the offices of Salon was the sound of my editor's coffee mug slamming against his desk when he realized I'd written yet another article about JetBlue flight 292. For those of you lucky enough to have forgotten, that was the injured Airbus A320 whose Sept. 21 landing at Los Angeles International Airport became the season's most popular reality show -- and the subsequent topic of two (make that three) installments of this column. Having successfully begged the boss's pardon, I'll ask those of you aiming your cursors toward the BACK button to bear with me as well:
The media sell-by date for airplane accidents, especially minor scrapes in which not so much as a nose bleeds or ankle gets twisted, is blessedly brief, and I'm vulnerable to attack for perpetuating what I went out of my way to declare was, from the very start, a nonstory. After all, it was I who assailed Harold Meyerson of the American Prospect for giving "an already overblown story a second life," and later sent an ornery letter to Ira Glass, host of the popular public radio eries "This American Life." Earlier this month that show ran a segment describing the JetBlue Airbus and its errant tires as "a plane that might not make it back safely," conducting interviews with people who'd been aboard, including a man who wept as the plane circled. "Having portrayed a relatively minor problem as life-or-death," I wrote to Glass, "was insulting to pilots, passengers, and your audience alike. Such hype preys on people's ignorance and misunderstanding about airplanes, and disrespects the many truly hazardous situations dealt with by aircrews in the past." (If it's not already obvious, I can be irascible, and imagine my discomfort after Mr. Glass was gracious enough to personally reply. He not only apologized but admitted to being a regular reader of this column.)
At hand, however, in the guise of a minor event, has been a multilayered story presenting a curious trove of fodder, from the news networks' crude theatricizing of the landing to myriad technical questions -- none of which were adequately addressed by the major media. In many respects the saga of flight 292 wasn't about airplanes at all, but about us -- the American consumer as gullible viewer and insatiable voyeur. Those buckled in aboard the Airbus, meanwhile, were able to witness their own fates unfolding -- or so they were led to believe -- on live seatback television. As I wrote here on Sept. 30, transfixed passengers assumed they were watching themselves, when in truth they were watching us watch them.
My vetting of the fiasco brought in plenty of mail -- not all of it concordant or thankful. I was dressed down for bumbling the physics of deceleration, for underestimating the hazards of flat tires and for whitewashing the "imminent danger" of airline maintenance outsourcing. Most of this I knew might be coming, but one accusation that really hit me sideways was a charge of "pilot-bashing." This in response to my downplaying of the alleged heroics of JetBlue Capt. Scott Burke. Admittedly I've gone out of my way to sober up the public's notion of exactly what Burke, aka "Captain Cool," had or hadn't done, but I worry that my intent was misinterpreted.
"I can't believe what I'm hearing," says a reader. "Here's a pilot going out of his way to scoff at the professionalism and skills of another!"
Now wait a minute. To set the record straight, I'm a furloughed pilot, obliged to new and harsher duties in my role as online columnist and general curmudgeon-at-large.
Kidding aside, I've vouched for Burke's professionalism and skill, as best we're able to ascertain those things, and I'm happy to do so again. My exasperation pertains only to how those things have been co-opted and embellished by the media. Coming in with a twisted nose wheel simply isn't a revealing enough test of a pilot's mettle. That's not scoffing at the crew, it's to keep from cheapening the idea of heroics. As pointed out in my note to Ira Glass, any number of pilots have, with little or no public attention, battled and survived far more dire emergencies.
How about a total electric failure over the Andes at 3 o'clock in the morning? That's what happened in April 2004 to the pilots of United Airlines flight 854, a 767 flying from Buenos Aires to Miami. Under darkness, with their cockpit instruments dead or dying fast, including all radios and navigational equipment, Capt. Brian Witcher and his crew managed a successful emergency landing in mountain-ringed Bogotá, Colombia.
Or consider the predicament facing American Eagle Capt. Barry Gottshall and first officer Wesley Greene three months earlier. Moments after takeoff from Bangor, Maine, on a snowy afternoon, their Embraer regional jet suffered a freak control system failure resulting in full and irreversible deflection of the plane's rudder. Struggling to maintain directional control, they returned to Bangor under deteriorating weather. (Is there any other kind at BGR?). Visibility had fallen to a mile, and as the 37-seater approached the threshold, Gottshall had to maintain full aileron deflection -- that is, the control wheel turned to the stops and held there -- to keep from yawing into the woods.
Neither of these events garnered headlines on Fox or MSNBC, but the crews were duly honored at a recent Air Line Pilots Association awards banquet. (The American Eagle incident resulted in the forced inspection of more than 800 Embraer jetliners around the world. None was found defective.)
Last but not least, and while not to prolong the agony of our JetBlue hangover, readers should pay a visit to one of the most interesting air travel blogs on the Internet, Joe d'Eon's Fly With Me. D'Eon is a pilot for an undisclosed carrier. His podcast series on airline life is thoughtful, entertaining, and crisply produced. "Fly With Me" was recently showcased by Slate magazine's Andy Bowers. Dare I recommend it be your second stop for air travel insights on the Web?
Earlier this month d'Eon was able to post some remarkable audio of the in-flight conversation between Capt. Burke and JetBlue maintenance technicians during flight 292's melodrama. The tape provides a fascinating glimpse into exactly what the airline and crew knew -- and didn't know -- of their predicament as they attempted to decipher the A320's high-tech diagnostic software. Say the mechanics at one point: "We're confident the nose wheel is straight."
"You were right in saying that there was nothing heroic in the landing, and it was probably nearly routine," d'Eon says of my own reporting on the mishap. "But what this event underscores is the fact that the captain is the last line of defense against all the variations of Murphy's laws conspiring to make a good news day for CNN. He's also (usually) the first person to get the blame when metal gets bent. This is something I'm sure you understand, but the general public doesn't quite grasp this concept. When a pilot does what's expected of him in an irregular event, the public sees it as heroic. It's just easier that way."
