If you can keep your head...

[nineveh_uk]

I hope that if I am ever on a plane with one damaged engine and a window smashed in at 32,000 ft that my pilot sounds as frankly bored with a mundane day at work as Tammie Jo Shults does in this recording of yesterday's incident on Southwest Airlines while she is bringing the plane into land.

ATC: Is your airplane physically on fire?

Pilot: No, it's not on fire, but part of it's missing.

Isn't it a good thing that she persisted with her wish to become a fighter pilot after being turned down by the US Army (she joined the navy).

Comments

[naraht]

It's one of the things that actors often get wrong – they never manage to capture that steely calmness that astronauts and pilots (and surgeons, I'm guessing) get when something is really going pear shaped. Or they think that shouting is just more Dramatic or something.

[caulkhead]

Ship's captains, too (the good ones, at least).

On which note I give you Capt Radhika Menon, not only the first female captain in the Indian merchant navy, but also the winner of the International Maritime Organisation's award for exceptional bravery at sea (and not only bravery, but bloody good seamanship, too).

http://www.imo.org/en/MediaCentre/PressBriefings/Pages/30-Bravery-2016.aspx

[nineveh_uk]

Impressive! While giving me no desire to run away to sea whatsoever!

[nineveh_uk]

Even recordings of people who aren't pilots having to land a plane tend to have them sounding cool!

Complete speculation, but I wonder if this could relate to a civil (potential) disaster being directed as if it were a war film, war films being both the default and gold standard for "in a tough situation, a tough man takes charge and saves the day". So the astronaut/pilot/surgeon gets cast not as an experienced professional doing what experienced professionals have been trained to do, but a soldier in the heat of battle showing his courage by being dramatic and shouty. In complete contrast to how you actually show your courage as a pilot who doesn't want to die.

[moon_custafer]

directed as if it were a war film,

It’s possible I haven’t seen enough war films, or maybe the ones I’ve seen skew towards “made *during* WWII,” but I would think that for someone making decisions in the heat of battle, calm would also be the ideal default (you can always have dramatic scenes of them scared beforehand, or breaking down afterwards). I mean most stories I’ve read with battle scenes (a good many of which were written by veterans) tend to bring up that when Stuff is actually going on, you’re too busy not getting killed to actually feel anything.

[nineveh_uk]

You'd think that, and yet there is still an awful lot of running screaming into action!

[moon_custafer]

I suppose. A couple of days ago was the 100th anniversary of the death of the Red Baron, and by all accounts that was the result of multiple people, on both sides, who normally knew better, screaming into action.

[azdak]

It beats me how pilots and air traffic control ever manage to understand each other when things are going normally, let alone when planes are on fire and passengers are being sucked out of windows. The pilot on this recording is reasonably clear but I can't understand a damn thing the air traffic controller is saying - and they're both native English speakers (I once listened to a number of air traffic communications for work - no emergencies, thankfully - and the English that a lot of pilots spoke sounded to me like total gobbledook).

[nineveh_uk]

I've often felt the same when I've heard cockpit recordings. I suppose that there could be an extra layer of incomprehensibility added by the audio recording equipment, but still. It can hardly add to the ease of the situation!

Perhaps that explains part of pilot calmness. Anyone with a personality to get easily distracted by small irritants (i.e. me) won't make it through training because they will be failed for wanting to throttle air traffic control.

[caulkhead]

There is a whole section on 'deliberate calm' and how to achieve it as part of the merchant navy leadership qualification, and I'd be surprised if it wasn't the same in the air (presumably this is one of the reasons Martin Crieff failed his pilot exams five times).

Judging from some of the emails I get, not all my readers apply it off the bridge.

[nineveh_uk]

Not only a not great pilot, but a pilot prone to panic: definitely sounds a plausible reason for Martin to fail five times!

I like the idea of learning "deliberate calm", it would probably make me better at my rather less life-risking job.

[antisoppist]

My impression of those sorts of communications* is that they work very well as long as everyone is saying predictable things in the manner set out in the manual drawn up for ways of saying things that people normally need to say, but misunderstandings happen when people go off script. I think it's like the thing where non-native English speakers speaking English understand each other because they are using a subset of English that everyone understands as a lingua franca and then you add a native speaker into the mix and communication breaks down.

*am technically still a radio amateur although I was never brave enough to talk to anyone once I'd qualified

[azdak]

Ah, that makes perfect sense! Although given that I very much hope "someone has been sucked out of a window" constitutes going off-script, it was just as well that on this occasion there were no non-native speakers involved.

Do you have a handle? (I hope that's the correct lingo and I'm not making a total fool of myself...)

[antisoppist]

Callsign. G7VNL though it has probably lapsed or something as I think I ought to be paying to maintain my licence. My dad is still active (in the winter) as Golf seven hotel charlie oscar. I did a lot of shortwave radio listening and collected remote radio stations, and it came out of that, and because dad did it. But I'm not actually interested in the technology of radio. I was more interested in communicating with people across the world, and then the internet arrived, which meant you didn't have to know how to build a radio in order to do that.

[nineveh_uk]

I very much hope "someone has been sucked out of a window" constitutes going off-script

I'm reminded of the line in Good Omens when the ship is grounded on a suddenly-appeared island, and the captain is happy that the maritime codes contains a message for just such a circumstance.

Having looked them up, I note the 1969 one (which was the edition coming immediately to hand) does contain some worrying medical options. Though possibly still better to get your treatment via flag than just hope for the best.

[legionseagle]

There's quite a lot about suddenly appearing islands and who owns them in Roman law (their appearance in the sea quod rarem accidit, but in rivers it becomes frequentem.)

[perennialanna]

It hasn't appeared suddenly, but this island changes country twice a year.

[nineveh_uk]

That looks an entirely sensible solution, at least as long as they don't discover a diamond mine on it.

[moon_custafer]

I think there’s a disputed island that Canada and Denmark have been fighting over for a while, for definitions of “fighting” that include “taking turns going ashore and leaving each other flags, notes, and bottles of alcohol.”

[slemslempike]

I had forgotten that bit of GO! And now I want to reread when I have promised myself no rereads until I have read at least two off my unread shelf. Shelves.

[nineveh_uk]

I am trying to do something similar and not entirely succeeding.

[tree_and_leaf]

Although given that I very much hope "someone has been sucked out of a window" constitutes going off-script,

Actually, it sounds like ATC doesn't take that bit in properly - he says something like 'what do you mean - never mind, we'll sort it out when you're down.'

[antisoppist]

My favourite is the bit where ATC asks "OK, which airport?" and the very slightest hint of ironic irritation when she replies "[...] your closest".

She has told them the plane has a fire twice by that point.

[nineveh_uk]

I liked that bit, too. I can imagine that asking the pilot could be standard, in that they know the plane and its circumstances better, but you'd think "your closest airport is X, do you wish to land there" might be an option!

[antisoppist]

Given that she's not saying "Request to land at X. Plane is on fire", it is definitely more of a "do not have time to consider airport options at this moment I am telling you what is happening in case we suddenly fall out of the sky although I am going to make damn sure we do not suddenly fall out of the sky" situation.