
Southwest 1380: think about the flight attendants - troydavis
http://blogs.harvard.edu/philg/2018/04/19/southwest-1380-think-about-the-flight-attendants/
======
SomeHacker44
As a commercial jet pilot (not airlines, small jets by Cessna), my reaction to
much of the coverage in, say, the NYT, was much the same. This was an
"ordinary" event from a training perspective, and has a straightforward set of
responses - fly the plane, memory items, checklist items (the QRH mentioned),
etc. Indeed, as they mention, in a crew environment things are even more calm
and responsibilities are (or should be) well defined.

I've had an engine failure in cruise flight (on a multi-engine piston plane)
in a single-pilot situation. (I later wrote about it in a magazine article.)
We train for that too - although not as frequently as airline pilots do who
train at least every six months. It was also a non-event from a "what to do".
In fact, the only time my single passenger mentioned she was made nervous
(after we landed) was when ATC asked for the number of souls on board (which
they knew from my IFR flight plan but they always ask). "When did I become a
soul???"

One thing my best instructor always told me about an emergency: "First, wind
your watch." In other words, don't panic and do things hastily and make things
worse. Especially in cruise.

So, kudos to the flight deck crew for doing exactly what they had trained to
do and successfully putting the plane on the ground after dealing with the
emergency!

Kudos to the rest of the flight crew for what must have been total chaos and
fear among the passengers and for doing what I'm sure was their absolute best
to save the unfortunate victim.

And, in the end, let's all remember that this (seemingly) slightly uncontained
engine failure could have been much, much worse and be glad of that. Let's
also be thankful that the training airline pilots receive generally have
situations that are much less benign than an engine failure in cruise and have
it drilled in to them how to handle it.

~~~
DrJokepu
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t asking for the number of souls is basically
asking how many people are (still) alive, as opposed to asking about the
number of persons, which would also include deceased people? If someone died
during the incident, given that the pilot is not a doctor with the medical
authority to decide who’s alive and who isn’t, would that person still be
reported as a soul?

~~~
rwc
Souls on board is a way of asking number of living humans on board — so
there’s no confusion when asked how many are alive on the flight whether we
should be including dogs, cats, parakeets or the dead guy in a cargo casket
being transported.

~~~
oconnor663
I feel like "souls" is not at all clear about the dogs :)

------
tgb
The most incredible part of this story is the fact that it is the first
fatality in a US-registered passenger aircraft accident in over _nine years_
and the first one in Southwest's 51 year history.

(Though looking into it, that overlooks two deaths in Southwest's history: one
where a passenger attempted to enter the cockpit and was subdue by other
passengers and later died and another where the plane overran the run way
during landing and struck a car, killing a young boy in the car.)

~~~
cylinder
We’ve chosen as a society to go all in on aviation safety due to the freakish
and scary nature of aviation accidents.

Meanwhile the US lags the developed world in road safety. Driving in the US is
like a mad max situation. Many unnecessary deaths are preventable. Road deaths
are double the OECD average.

With high safety investment comes higher costs of flying which pushes more
people into driving instead, which kills more people.

~~~
mattmaroon
Probably because our odds of dying in a car crash are still something like
1/10,000. It's remote enough to not seem real.

~~~
alanh
One in 10k? Nonsense.

> _Your odds of dying in a car crash, over the span of your entire life, are
> somewhere in between 1 and 50 and 1 and 100._ —
> [http://www.asktheodds.com/death/car-crash-
> odds/](http://www.asktheodds.com/death/car-crash-odds/)

> Chance of dying in transportation accidents (mostly motor vehicles): 12 per
> 10k _per year_ —
> [https://www.livescience.com/](https://www.livescience.com/)

> Lifetime odds of death by motor vehicle crash, United States, 2016: 1 in 102
> — [http://injuryfacts.nsc.org/all-injuries/preventable-death-
> ov...](http://injuryfacts.nsc.org/all-injuries/preventable-death-
> overview/odds-of-dying/)

If you don’t know anyone killed in a car accident, you are very lucky.

~~~
Alex3917
> Lifetime odds of death by motor vehicle crash, United States, 2016: 1 in 102

If you only drive sober, always wear a seatbelt, and only drive cars with the
highest NHTSA ratings then your lifetime chances are probably more like 1 in
300, if not less.

That said, your chances of getting seriously injured in a car crash are
significantly greater than that.

~~~
jopsen
Or move to a Scandinavia where the crash rate is ~30% of the US, measured by
population (which is probably the measure these stats use).

Don't apply stats like this to yourself, use them to guide policy instead.

~~~
refurb
Why would you measure by population? Shouldn't it be by distance driven?

Otherwise cities like NYC would have a really low rate since so many people
don't have cars.

~~~
tialaramex
Well that depends. If what I care about is not dying then going twice as far
but still dying isn't an improvement.

Measure the thing you actually care about. After issuing metal helmets to
infantry in WW1 the number of men hospitalised with head injuries climbed
enormously. Were helmets a bad idea? Nope. To get hospitalised first you need
to survive your injuries.

------
userbinator
_Thus the “engine failure then land single-engine” is something that a mid-
career airline pilot would have done 500 times or more in a sim that is so
realistic it can be logged as time in the actual aircraft._

For actual evidence of how common this is, look at avherald.com --- as I write
this, there are over a dozen engine-problem incidents within the past week.

~~~
rory096
>there are over a dozen engine-problem incidents within the past week.

Shrapnel flying into the fuselage causing depressurization and major wing
damage, on the other hand...

The unique thing about this incident isn't that they blew a blade. It's that
engine containment failed catastrophically.

~~~
ItsMe000001
That's no different for the pilot at that moment, you fly the airplane exactly
the same. Loss of pressure is trained for too - a lot. What happened here is
remarkable but that does not play a role for flying, more for what happens
after landing _(for example, the whole world covering the incident...)_.

I'm a measly PP-ASEL and while I applaud the captain all the "hero" and
especially the "only a fighter jet pilot could do this" articles are
ridiculous.

~~~
rory096
>That's no different for the pilot at that moment, you fly the airplane
exactly the same.

Disagree — I find it hard to believe the flight characteristics wouldn't
change with this level of leading edge damage:
[https://i.imgur.com/aEWw6UG.png](https://i.imgur.com/aEWw6UG.png)

(On the other hand, compensating with _more right rudder!_ won't feel too
unusual!)

>Loss of pressure is trained for too - a lot.

Agreed. But the two _together_ compounds the problem and makes it a more
dangerous situation that's trained for less.

>What happened here is remarkable but that does not play a role for flying,
more for what happens after landing (for example, the whole world covering the
incident...).

Well, not exactly. Loss of pressure would prompt the pilot to dive to
breathable altitudes, the rate of which might _really_ matter given what we've
seen of passengers wearing oxygen masks improperly. A slower rate of dive
might have resulted in some real injuries from hypoxia. (That said, it seems
like a higher rate than the performed 3000 fpm might have been justified.)

>I'm a measly PP-ASEL and while I applaud the captain all the "hero" and
especially the "only a fighter jet pilot could do this" articles are
ridiculous.

Same, and agreed. Did the pilot do her job as described? Yes. Could a lot of
people have died if she _hadn 't_ properly followed procedure? Definitely. Did
she go above and beyond and pull off a near-impossible feat like US1549?
Probably not, but there probably wasn't anything above and beyond that _could
be_ done — following procedure and training was the right move.

Does that make you a hero? That just depends on your definition. Certainly
she's as much of a 'hero' as the fireman who saves people from a burning
building, as his job specifies.

~~~
ItsMe000001
> and makes it a more dangerous situation

I would say that that is not the point though. More dangerous, more
spectacular - what matters is that you have to fly the airplane. Whether the
situation is more dangerous does not directly influence the flight
characteristics, that's "meta", something you can think about later on the
ground, "Wow, we were sooo close! If that piece had hit a few inches further
left... or if xyz had also happened...".

> Does that make you a hero?

I don't really mind that question as such - but the hero _worship_ that
happens, which is so mindless. It feels all _fake_ , like theater, like the
media does it following an established procedure, unthinking. Are you a "hero"
for being competent? I would have thought that word has an element of
volunteering, going into danger when you don't have to (plus also being
competent, i.e. succeeding).

------
justin66
The most extraordinary effort performed that day was, judging from early
reports, done by two passengers who pulled a dying woman's broken body back
into an aircraft undergoing depressurization. That and figuring out how to
cover the hole in the fuselage strike me as more "heroic" (a loaded term,
maybe) than piloting the jet while it was down an engine, or even calming the
passengers and helping them don their oxygen masks.

~~~
lowbloodsugar
Indeed. The guy who, in a holed aircraft with someone actively being sucked
out, _undid his seatbelt_ and tried to help.

------
ben7799
Egotistical tone to this article... good explanation of procedures on an
airliner but for background the author of the blog post made a boat load of
money on Web 1.0 and fancies himself as a pilot. It's way too easy for a part-
timer like him to pretend this was no big deal and he could have done it too.

He writes this article with a tone of jealousy or something that the captain
is taking too much credit or didn't really have a hard job or something.

The captain of the SW plane didn't even want to be identified, the press took
care of that. The fact that the rest of the crew wasn't identified doesn't
mean the captain is taking too much credit or that everyone thinks the rest of
the crew didn't do a great job too.

No reason for him to try and take the captain down in his post, a simpler blog
post praising the rest of the crew would have been better.

If you were looking for it you could probably claim an element of sexism too
since he's acting like the co-pilot isn't getting any credit because he's a
man. That probably takes a reader who was predisposed to that viewpoint
though.

~~~
vvanders
I got a similar read from it, just because it was "routine" doesn't make it
any less impressive. There were ~150 lives in the hands of that captian and
keeping your cool in that situation should be commended (esp compared to
situations like Air France where panic seemed to play a large factor).

~~~
ben7799
Right. Doing it in the simulator and doing it in real life when the engine has
exploded and the cabin has depressurized and you've got serious injuries and
panic onboard are not the same thing.

Practicing in the simulator is routine, landing a plane that's had an
explosion is not.

Nothing wrong with celebrating a job well done.

~~~
vvanders
Yeah, no idea why you're getting downvoted.

My father used to be involved in law enforcement(and still does a bunch of
public safety stuff). As I was told you can train for something constantly and
yet you won't know how you react until you're put into the situation.

In my mind, praise costs you almost nothing while saying "well, actually..."
just makes it you look petty.

------
melling
On an unrelated note, I wish there was an easy way to recommend typo fixes on
blogs. I’ll often find them on my blogs too. He’s got one:

“One any fire is extinguished, e.g., by cutting off the fuel or blowing the”

Sometimes I’ll write a blog and not find my mistake for months. Linus’ Law
applied to writing on the Internet.

~~~
dorfsmay
For some blog sites I agree, but here it is Philip Greenspun who shares his
email, phone number and physical mailing address on his website! I've sent an
email about the typo at that address.

I usually look for an email on the blog site, then on thier other/main sites,
then a direct message option on twitter, then a contact in whois for that
domain, then, as much as it drive me nuts that it could be corrected so
easily, it's just a tipo after all, and I try to let it go.

~~~
melling
Hey, I was simply throwing out a suggestion that it would be nice to have a
quick, quiet, and general way for everyone to deal with the problem.

If you like the current solution, and don’t see a problem, carry on.

~~~
coatmatter
I completely get you, and as someone who cringes at Linus Torvalds's "touch"
typing style (which makes me wonder if that's where some of his overall
"style" comes from), I wish there was an easy package or plugin that could be
popularly applied to publishing and posting software (e.g., web browsers). It
doesn't need to be mandatory, but I'm sure many people wouldn't mind the
option so long as it's not open for abuse.

------
jacquesm
The higher accident rate in general aviation is due to a lot of factors, but
almost certainly not because flying a large jet is 'easier'.

The big differences are: discipline, training, maintenance, process and a
safety-first attitude.

~~~
chrisper
Also single engine vs multi engine.

~~~
jacquesm
Good point, yes, that makes a huge difference.

~~~
sokoloff
Single engine is easier in the piston and turboprop world (as the multiengine
plane seems like it's trying to kill you if you lose an engine at low speed
and high power [like on takeoff]).

In the jet world, multiengine ops become easier again, as the airplane is less
trying to kill you in the event of a failure (much lower drag from a failed
engine, no runaway prop concerns, less yaw from asymmetric thrust) and you
have massive amounts of surplus power at low altitude. There are situations in
a jet where you can lose an engine on the takeoff roll, even prior to lifting
the nosewheel, and for the safest course of action to be to _continue the
takeoff_ , take the problem airborne, and consider a return or divert in the
air. (Failures after V1 ["takeoff decision speed"] and before Vr ["rotate"].)
There are no such times in the piston or (edit to add: light) turboprop world.

The safety rates and reasons are frequently debated. As a pilot who frequently
flies my family around and is strongly disinterested in making the numerator
part of the statistics, I read every NTSB fatal, every crash of the types I
fly, and most of the serious crashes of other types.

My thoughts are that the pilots are, by a wide margin, the weakest link in
general aviation (non-military, non-commercial) piston singles, making poor
decisions on fuel, weather, and other dispatch-related topics. I'd bet that
3/4ths of the piston single fatals have pilot or dispatch (also pilot) as the
root cause, not engine or mechanical.

~~~
joehosteny
Accelerate-go is definitely used in twin pistons and turboprops. For example,
in the DA-42, V1 is specified as 75 kts. In the King Air 350, V1 is typically
around 100 kts.

~~~
sokoloff
I do stand corrected on the King Air 350 (and it's likely that the P180,
Dash-8, ATR-42 will also be similar and come with balanced field
restrictions). Thank you for that correction.

Accelerate-go calculations do not necessarily mean that engine failures before
rotation are to be taken aloft. My 58P has accelerate-go charts published
(they're not pretty at heavy weights on high/hot days). Nevertheless, any
engine failure with the nosewheel on the ground is an abort/RTO.

The DA-42 I can't find any reference for V1 below Vr and to take an engine
failure prior to Vr aloft. That was looking in the QRH and checklists for the
aircraft. I see both specified at 75 knots and the checklist response for
engine failure on the roll is only the rejected takeoff instructions.

------
jrockway
I don't really have a problem commending the captain for safely landing her
aircraft. Yes, she was trained for it. But plenty of people have performance
anxiety even when the stakes are low -- how many people perform perfectly when
losing your cool can lead to you killing yourself and hundreds of others?

And, it's not like airline captains always follow their training. Look at
Colgan Air Flight 3407. The aircraft aerodynamically stalled. To recover, the
captain pulled the control column backwards, the exact opposite of what
training called for, while the first officer silently reduced the lift of the
wing by reducing the flaps setting, the exact opposite of what their training
called for. They killed 49 people on board and one in the house they crashed
into.

So yes, it's easy to say "that was nothing, they're trained for that", and
while true, sometimes the training is not executed as precisely as necessary.
Not messing it up is commendable.

~~~
gbacon
That incident is a good case study into the concept of the accident chain.
Both pilots were tired. The first officer complained of feeling ill. The
captain had a history of failing four checkrides and three airline check
events. Crew coordination was poor. The captain evidently had a complete loss
of situation awareness.

Richard Collins (not the pop singer) in Air Facts Journal called it a system
error[0].

[0]: [https://airfactsjournal.com/2014/03/double-tragedy-colgan-
ai...](https://airfactsjournal.com/2014/03/double-tragedy-colgan-air-
flight-3407/)

~~~
jrockway
Absolutely. But you can apply all that to the Southwest incident; the captain
didn't fail her checkrides, she didn't come to work tired or ill, she managed
her crew resources effectively, etc., etc.

On some level, I agree that nobody is a hero for just doing their job. But
when not doing your job leads to people dying, it sure is nice when you do it
efficiently while under pressure.

------
coatmatter
> "There are some items to do from memory, with the two pilots cooperating so
> that they can agree on which engine is the dead one and should have its
> thrust/fuel lever cut off, for example.

Airline training stresses the use of the autopilot in an emergency, which
frees the human pilots to concentrate on the checklists and not pulling back,
for example, the thrust lever on the running engine."

This comes to mind:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TransAsia_Airways_Flight_235#I...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TransAsia_Airways_Flight_235#Investigation)
([https://avherald.com/h?article=48145bb3](https://avherald.com/h?article=48145bb3))

------
chx
Check [https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-veteran-fighter-pilot-
tamm...](https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-veteran-fighter-pilot-tammy-jo-
shults-saved-crippled-southwest-flight-1380) instead of this garbage.

------
peacetreefrog
Who is going to read the book he recommends at the end -- 9 Minutes, 20
Seconds? A well-written in depth look at a 29 person plane crash and the
people involved? Sounds terrifying.

~~~
AceyMan
I've known about that book but not read it.

I have read the full, final NTSB report on the accident.

I was the on-duty Flight Control Manager at the time of the incident and
received the initial contact (via landline) from FAA. (Due to the specifics of
the failure mode the crew did not radio their dispatcher.)

Incredibly, within minutes, the accident was already on local broadcast as
breaking news while we were still putting together the Go Team.

In my current position (DevOps) people have commented how cool I am when
important stuff goes off the rails — I usually just say "compared to my
previous career, this is nothing."

------
joering2
In case someone asks "childish question" why airplanes do not have parachutes,
of course they could have those, but the cost of design and implementation on
such large scale of tens of thousands of planes, outweighs any outcry caused
by few crashes that occur per year. Hence no law that would force
airlines/airplanes to implement those and airlines/airplanes are last when it
comes to lavishly spending money out of their free will, even if it means
saving one extra life.

~~~
coatmatter
> the cost of design and implementation on such large scale of tens of
> thousands of planes, outweighs any outcry caused by few crashes that occur
> per year

Or it would remove money from where it could be better spent. There are some
light aircraft (such as some experimental ultralights) that do have
parachutes. Frankly, I'd prefer to fly in an airliner or other planes that
don't have such warning bells and red flags all over.

Here's an example: What would the effect be if all passengers who board a
plane or cruiseliner were required to wear life jackets before take off just
in case of the remote chance of needing to face a disaster over water?

And a possibly more controversial example: Helmets and bullet vests can save
_some_ lives. At what point should the focus be on legislating on their
mandatory use, versus fixing the problems at the source?

I'd class parachutes, helmets and bullet vets as PPE in the chart over here -
resources and attention is always finite even before we get into the topic of
freedom:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchy_of_hazard_controls](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchy_of_hazard_controls)

------
thvu1k
I think it's heroic nonetheless

------
JustSomeNobody
If a pilot lands a broken plane safely, she may just be doing her job, but to
a passenger on board, they may feel she saved their life. That feeling is
justifiable and should in no way be minimized by having a "well, technically"
attitude.

As for the media, well, they're going to get caught up in the emotional side
of it. That's just a given.

------
chx
Oh, FFS. Yeah, we know, you can fly and land with a single engine, that's what
ETOPS is more or less, noone questioned that. And yes, a two engine turboprop
might have more problems with a single engine, but no idea how relevant that
is.

But please. She had a situation at her hands where 140 people are injured,
perhaps dying and she talks to the tower with a stony calm. Even the famous
"Houston Center voice" of the Tower Controller was shaken a bit when he asked
back. That's what made everyone astonished.

~~~
peterwwillis
That's just embellishment. 140 people were not injured or dying, she was told
what the situation was. A Navy fighter pilot with over two decades of
commercial flying is not going to get rattled by one engine out on a jetliner.
It's not like the landing gear was broken.

~~~
ynniv
This is horseshit. She had an engine explode and shrapnel ripped apart the
fuselage, it’s not remotely a “one engine out simulation”. Was the wing
damaged? How badly was the fuselage damaged? Was the plane actually on fire as
the indicators showed? She was accounting for a large number of unknowns that
the armchair crowd here is not even considering. She was also told that
someone was ejected from the plane. Do these not have an impact on the pilot’s
mental state? She retired from flying fighter jets only to be shot down by her
own poorly maintained engine while carrying 150 other people? This is looking
at a good outcome and deciding that it looked easy.

Yeah, the pilot matters.

~~~
Brockenstein
Aye. I'm not going to say she did the impossible, threaded the eye of the
needle or anything like that. But there was plenty of opportunity or
circumstance for things to horribly wrong. But she's got a ton of experience
and in the moment of truth she didn't choke and everyone who could be saved
was saved. That ought to be enough for anyone.

