CAL, the moron lottery and the 50/50 rule

I love the term "Aviation Safety" as it is actually an oxi-moron. Although, statistically, aviation is by far the safest way to get around- if you talk to anyone at the NTSB (which oversees safety and investigates accidents involving highway, railway, marine, aviation and pipeline) and ask what the safest way to travel is, they'll answer by saying simply- "pipeline."

The simple fact of physics is that anytime you accelerate the human animal to speeds greater than 50 knots or loft the human animal higher than 50 feet you have banked enough potential energy to kill it...period. So simply by entering into any mode that does either of those two things, you are in danger of death. I call it my 50/50 rule and have taught it to all of my flight students- not to worry them, but to scare the living crap out of them. The 50/50 rule is a reality pill that anyone who does other than sitting on the fence and watching the birds, should take.

You see, we who have been steeped in the profession of aviation, know well that we are only as safe as we keep ourselves. That, along with the 50/50 rule is another lesson that the public at large should learn. That lesson is that aviation is the most inherently dangerous for those who forget that it is inherently dangerous. Such was the case recently with the CAL flight that hit turbulence and had passengers flinging around the cabin like a maraca. The captain had had the seat belt sign on for over an hour at the time of the incident. You see when the captain has had the seat belt sign illuminated for over an hour and then the aircraft hits turbulence while some passenger is slobing around with their belt off- and thus finds his or her head stuck through a fresh hole in the overhead and ends up examining the wiring for the reading lights- we in professional aviation know that person has earned their new position on the aircraft. Aviation safety is that simple- follow the rules, listen to the instructions and you'll be as safe as you can make yourself- which is the best that you can do. Yet still the public won't get it. I watched a ton of coverage of the CAL turbulence encounter and the reporters focused on the injured passengers- zooming in on bandages on their faces and braces on their necks while ignoring the seat belts they failed keep fastened.

Of course CAL will end up paying a ton to these morons who can't understand the light-up sign that shows fasten your seat belts, or the announcement made by the flight attendants. Unfortunately, these dim-wits have, in fact, now won the moron lottery. Yes they'll get lawyers (who'll get most of the cash in fees) and they'll file and collect plenty from the airline. The moron lottery has no regard for how much sense a passenger failed to use, it only applies to how safe flying is supposed to be in spite of their non-efforts in the process of making it safe. No one will ask the questions "Were you going faster than 50 knots?" "Were you higher up higher than 50 feet?" "Why didn't you have your FU%$ING seat belt on!?" The answer, of course, would be "Duhhh... I donno." DING! DING! DING! You win the moron's lottery! Johny Donnavin, tell 'em what they win!

One of the paradoxes of the aviation industry is that in order for us to sell it to the public we have to convince them that it is "perfectly safe." A long time ago I recall someone at one of the small airports I was flying out of telling a perspective customer, "Flying for me is just as common as getting into my car and driving... it's that safe." He was killed in a car accident a few years later... wasn't wearing a seat belt. Odds are that if he had told that person the facts, like the 50/50 rule, they'd have never signed up for flying lessons. Odds also are if he'd have learned the 50/50 rule himself and obeyed the law about seat belts, he'd be alive today too.

We have to go along showing the public the big yellow smiley face from the 70s while only sharing among ourselves the honest stories of just how close the close calls can be. Perhaps with every commercial pilot's certificate there should come a big paper sack with a big yellow smiley face painted on it and eye-holes cut into it... ya' know... to be worn while in public.

Although when traveling, I feel the most safe when I'm above 18,000 feet- in pro. land- I never think of flying as perfectly safe. As an ATP and professional aviator I always keep in mind the 50/50 rule and the fact that no matter if I'm in the nose or in the back, I'm still in a huge hunk of metal that is a complex machine that is cheating the law of gravity. The bottom line is that aviation is the most inherently dangerous for those who forget that it is inherently dangerous. Of course it would be really hard to sell tickets if that motto is written across the ticket jacket.

CAL Captain Dies in flight- news media goes nuts

Aviation made the major news outlets today with a sad event in flight. On board a trans-Atlantic CAL 777 the captain passed away in flight. This sorrow full event, of course, ignited the swamp gas in the 24 hour news networks and let slip the leashes of their on-call "aviation experts." I, however, now had to watch the coverage in order to attempt to get a few insane tid-bits that may be used in a future cartoon.

Along the twisted path of the news coverage of this event, where the newscasters try to cover in detail things to which they have no access to ANY details, my TV's "Dumb" meter tends to peg. Although FOX News managed to get a real airline pilot on the phone, they get credit for the least dumb, yet dumb anyway, question:

"Do you think they informed the people in the back (passengers) that the captain had died?"

As a former airline captain myself, as well as a long-time FO (First Officer), I could not help but answer that one aloud to my TV...

"Are you f#%kin' nuts?!"

Although I cannot speak for other airline pilots, in a situation like that I personally would turn into Captain Over from the movie "Airplane" calmly pointing out sights of interest out the passenger's windows as other crew members drop like flies. What did the reporter want to hear anyhow? "Oh sure I'd tell the PAX, after all, you can never have enough panic on board." Although there are times when you want to keep your passengers fully informed, when the pilot sitting next to you drops dead probably isn't one of them.

Then there was the CNN reporter who babbled in front of a screen showing Newark and drooled out some nonsense about how the aircraft may have been diverted if there had been a crosswind of over 30 knots because the FO may not have been able to land in any sort of crosswind. He then went on to say that the 777 got to the airport and found "... just 3 miles of visibility." Wooooo... 3 miles viz in a 777... wooooo scary.... much drama.... Shoot, I can recall days when I looked at the destination weather and said "500 and a mile? COOL! It's about time we caught a break." The fact is, for those non-career pilots reading this, that to a professional airline pilot all of those numbers describing ceiling and visibility and winds are simply a part of your day's work. The weather is what it is when you get there and the odds are that if it's good enough to start the approach that's all that really matters. We do not sit in the cockpit and fret about it- we just go in and do our job. The weather reports just give you a heads up before you get there and the odds are that no matter how bad it is, you've probably made approaches in a lot worse. That reporter's never been in a professional pilot's seat, otherwise he'd have known that "3 miles of visibility" is duck soup. Of course he's also probably sweating it out in the hope that he doesn't sound too technical or correct, otherwise CNN management may can him for actually knowing what he's talking about... like they did Miles O'Brien.

Dumbest of the questions came from one of the networks whose acronym name starts with a "C" when the meat puppet looking into the camera asked their expert on-call if he'd ever had a captain die on him. Of course the poor slob on the other end of the phone answered "no" but I wished that question had been asked of me- because I would have gone a bit farther.

Q: "Have you ever had a captain die on you?"

My A: "No, but I've flown with a few that I wished would die sitting next to me."

Then I'd proceed to elaborate until they took me off the air.

You would be amazed at how many people out there actually think that airline FOs (or as it was put over and over again in news reports "co-pilots") cannot fly the freaking airplane. I've had neighbors come up and ask me "How on earth did the "co-pilot" land that thing?" From watching the news networks, it is easy to see why regular people are so ill-informed... okay... stupid. It's because their only source of information is the stupid news media. Thank goodness my neighbors have me to turn to. I simply tell them that the blow-up autopilot in the movie "Airplane" really exists. In fact, it is FAA certified and every 90 days a mechanic has to inflate it and check for leaks. In case of a water landing it can even be used as a flotation device for the captain... just ask Sully.

The bottom line is that the surviving crew of CAL Flight 61 did exactly what they've been trained to do. In every training cycle you fly the sim dozens of times and almost never do an uneventful flight. You are always dealing with multiple and often odd-ball failures- including the death of the other pilot. Sure, the crew did a great job, but professional aviation demands that you do a great job every time you do your job. I was once told that it is the only job in the world where you are expected to do it perfectly every single time, and no one notices- from my experience, that is true.