Flying high?

5:51 AM

Maybe it’s because of the hours I spent boring holes in the sky as a private pilot, but commercial airline catastrophes seem to catch my attention. A significant percentage of aviation accidents are directly attributable to pilot error … everything from taking-off without checking fuel levels, not carrying the “right” charts on board, or trying to land in weather conditions far exceeding the airplane’s (but more often the pilots’) capabilities.

Just after getting my Instrument Rating, back in the days when I was flying several hours per week to keep current, I subscribed to a monthly National Transportation Safety Board newsletter that detailed the investigation results of specific aviation accidents, everything from headline-grabbing jumbo-jet crashes with hundreds of fatalities, down to student pilots who literally stalled and crashed in their own backyards while showing off for a girlfriend.

The reports came directly from NTSB files and included an official, comprehensive overview of background information applicable to determining the likely cause of the accident: forecasts reported before the incident, weather conditions at the time of the incident, when the airplane’s engine was last overhauled or serviced… and even how many hours the pilot(s) had slept the night before and what he/she ate that last time before climbing into the cockpit.

It was those kind of painstakingly personal details that slashed through the anonymity of watching the same news story on TV, and made each pilot’s life seem not so far removed from my own; the otherwise irrelevant finer points like, “After checking the weather forecast, the pilot called his wife and told her he was ‘running late and feeling tired,’ but was ‘very anxious to see her’ and expected to arrive home no later than 11:00 PM.”

Reading the minute-by-minute playback was like stepping back in time and joining the last few minutes of the flight as they occurred: I had little trouble imagining what it was like peering through the same dark windscreen at nine thousand feet on the same moonless night, or feeling the airplane’s controls become sluggish and unresponsive after mistakenly penetrating the storm cell, or being simultaneously awed and terrified by the unexpected proximity and immensity of a lightning bolt searing down just inches ahead of the propeller as it probed for any life or machine it could find between clouds on its short, unsympathetic appointment with earth.

Maybe the NTSB reports’ formal, indifferent tone created the illusion of foresight and control, implying that the reader, now armed with the advantage of hindsight, might somehow step through the timeline, take charge of the situation … and prevent the accident from ever happening in the first place.

But skipping back to re-read that next-to-the-last minute a dozen times couldn’t forestall the inevitable … that gut-wrenching moment when the wail of over-stressed metal pierced over the thunderclaps, the moment when the pilot felt the sickening lurch of the wings’ sad departure from the airframe … and knew this mistake would be the one that followed him to the last second of his life.

- - - - -

The aviation catastrophe I find myself remembering most often is the Concorde crash back in 2000.

I suppose it’s there because the Concorde represented a technological achievement (ferrying passengers across the Atlantic Ocean in just 3 hours) that’s not likely to be repeated … and the substantial cost of a round-trip ticket (about $18,000 by 2000) meant Concorde’s seats were largely reserved for folks with significant wealth at their disposal.

(During take-off that afternoon, the Concorde struck a piece of metal debris left over the runway by the airplane departing ahead of it, which punctured the narrow tires and caused them to overheat and catch fire. Then when the pilot retracted the landing wheels into the gear well, the fire was retracted along with them … and quickly spread inside the fuselage to cause the crash and kill all 100+ passengers and crew on board.)

In its 24-year service history no Concorde had ever crashed, not one life had been lost, but that one event was enough to worry passengers away from super-sonic flight forever, and end the Concorde’s flying life.

It may sound trite, but maybe the reason I keep going back to the Concorde catastrophe is because wealthy as the passengers might have been, no amount of money, jewelry on board, investment in plastic surgery, prestige, political influence or scheduling conflicts could save their lives that day … which led me to wonder how or whether, had the passengers only known a week in advance, they might have changed their priorities and lived the last week of their lives differently.

I’m not pointed fingers at the privileged, ultra-wealthy classes at all … because in the long-term we’re aboard the same flight and one day we’ll all arrive at the same earthly destination (under ground, I mean).

Instead I’ll point the longest finger back at myself, and admit searching for the ground 6 miles beneath me from the window during my most-recent commercial flight, and thinking, “There’s not a thing down there that I’ve saved-up, accumulated or stockpiled away that can do me any good right now … especially if the pilot flying the airplane sees something coming that’s just bound to ruin my day.

"Do not wear yourself out to get rich;
have the wisdom to show restraint.

Cast but a glance at riches, and they are gone,
for they will surely sprout wings
and fly off to the sky like an eagle."
-Proverbs 23:4-5

"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."
-Matthew 6:19-21