Musings of a Technonerd

Many moons ago, when I was taking flight lessons, both my ground school and flight instructors warned me of the dangers of complacency.

My ground school instructor told us that there were three different phases of an aviator's career that tended to be dangerous. The first is when the pilot has logged about 250 hours. The second is between 600 and 750. The third is around 1,200 hours. In each of these milestones, he warned, pilots tend to get too comfortable. They begin to start thinking they've "got this thing figured out." and begin glossing over procedures that up to that time, had been carefully attended to.

This includes many things such as check lists, landing procedures, in-flight navigation techniques, pre-flights, weather avoidance, working with air traffic control. You get the idea. Aviation is not a simple run out the door, hop in the plane, turn the key and you're off task. It's when pilots (and aviation related personnel, such as mechanics and air traffic controllers.) start to treat it like that is when people start dying.

The crash of Comair flight 191 near Lexington Kentucky is an excellent example of this. The PIC (Pilot-In-Command) was very experienced in this type of aircraft (A CRJ-100ER, just Google it.) with just over 3000 hours in type. Here's a copy of the transcript. While conducting their safety checks, they're talking about job situations, pay rates and scheduling, housing allowances. At one point, the co-pilot tried to do a checklist they had already completed, which the PIC called to his attention. Then, during engine start and push back, they start talking about the PIC's kids, and how many kids they planned to have. Oh, and while they were getting ready to taxi, they stated they had information Alpha even though Ground control had stated 5 minutes previously that information Bravo was current. (To be fair, another flight, Eagle flight 882, had also reported in earlier with information Alpha instead of Bravo.) Even during the takeoff, the Co-pilot (Who was flying the aircraft.) noted that the lack of runway lights was weird. (That should have sent up a big red flag!) This all resulted in the deaths of 49 people. The Co-pilot, who was pulled from the wreckage, survived. He suffered numerous serious injuries including the eventual loss of a leg and brain damage that prevented him from remembering anything about the accident. They'd done this many times before, and probably thought they had this routine down pat.

Another good example of this is the more recent incident of an Air Force B-52 flying around for 36 hours with six live nuclear rounds under the wing, in the form of armed cruise missiles. Once again, we have an example of complacency. You can read about it here. The various crews had done all of this before, the story notes. The officer in charged took a look at the load on the right pylon, probably ASSUMED that the ground crew had loaded the same thing on the left pylon, and rather than walk over and inspect those (It's a long way, doncha know!) he just signed off and went on his way. There were visual clues available to all involved to determine if a live round was in the missile, and everyone missed those cues. They'd done this many times, and came to "expect" things to go a certain way. Complacency strikes again.

It happens more than we'd like to think, I'm sure. People do dumb things all the time. We just don't hear about the instances where no one gets hurt.

"In flying I have learned that carelessness and overconfidence are usually far more dangerous than deliberately accepted risks."

— Wilbur Wright in a letter to his father

Things haven't changed much, have they???