"Brain Fade"
Fatigue has caused accidents. It's not the kind of fatigue in which physical strength fades; it doesn't take much energy to move a control. The fatigue that causes accidents is mental fatigue. In auto racing before disk brakes were developed, the old drum brakes were subject to what was called "brake fade". When being used hard, they heated up and braking performance faded away, sometimes to almost no braking at all.
Race drivers applied that to what happens mentally during a long race, and called it "brain fade". To me the term fits. Not only does ones mental ability fade, but the ability to recognize it also fades. Without the ability to know one has become impaired, "brain fade" sometimes becomes evident only through dumb mistakes, sometimes resulting in an accident.
The Air France accident in Toronto (August 2005) illustrates this point. The pilots, both well-trained and experienced, landed the plane far past the proper touchdown point. It was something no pilot in his or her right mind would do. Yet, they did it. In my opinion, they did it because of "brain fade". They had been flying too long that day. US regulations limit the hours a pilot can fly in a twenty-four hour period to eight hours, unless there is an extra pilot to relieve them periodically. When the Air France pilots ended up in the ravine off the far end of the runway, they had been flying about nine hours.
You might think that the difference between eight hours and nine hours is not significant. But even eight hours in a seat, staring into the sun as you chase it westward across the Atlantic while maintaining concentration on the instrument panel, can bring on "brain fade".
In 1995, American Airlines pilots crashed during descent into Cali, Columbia, due to an error and failure to promptly respond to automated warnings. They had been on duty for many hours due to delays.
And in 1999, after ignoring regulations on the maximum allowed hours on duty, an American Airlines supervisory pilot ran off the far end of the runway in Little Rock, Arkansas due to a host of stupid piloting decisions.
Now, hopefully, having convinced you that the "brain fade" type of mental impairment can lead a highly trained and highly experienced pilot to make almost unbelievable errors, consider a story broken by the Wall Street Journal on October 21st.
JetBlue, with its leather seats, onboard television, and three landings (two more in addition to the one you may have watched on television) with cocked nose wheels, has reportely "purposely overworked its pilots on regularly-scheduled commercial flights, unbeknownst to passengers, as part of a money-saving experiment."
The WSJ is not available free online, but you can read the story in an article titled "You Are JetBlue's Guinea Pig" at http://www.jaunted.com/story/2006/10/23/52159/527/travel/Airline+Report:+You+Are+JetBlue's+Guinea+Pig.
Also JetBlue Used Passengers as Guinea Pigs at http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2006/10/jetblue_pilots.html.
Though pilots are limited by FAA regulations (which are already too lax in my opinion) to eight hours flying per day, JetBlue had pilots "volunteer" for shifts up to eleven hours.
The article says the FAA expressed anger at the JetBlue scheme and said they "don't allow experiments with passengers on board, period."
Management can always find a few pilots who will volunteer to pose as men of steel. There is a saying in aviation: "There are old pilots, and bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots." The boldness in volunteering to show they can sometimes fly eleven hours without brain fade may work out in the short run, but it may cost somebody's life in the long run.
When JetBlue first started, I was pleased that they -- unlike some of the other new airlines -- bought new airplanes. I took it as an indication that Blue's management wanted to do things right. The integrity of management is more important in a non-union airline than it is in a union airline because when there is a pilots' union, the pilots can force management to do the right thing. At a non-union airline, the pilots are not really in charge of the plane; they have to accept the plane whether the maintenance is right or not. And, at a non-union airline, pilots have to work the hours management requires, legal -- even by lax FAA standards -- or not; they can be fired if they don't comply.
So the discovery that JetBlue's management is not satisfied with even the lax FAA limits on the pilot workday is shocking. Leather seats and television are nice; maybe even comforting. But I don't find it at all comforting to know that management is trying to find ways to push the cockpit crew into "brain fade".
Though modern airliners are easy to fly, good judgment is still occasionally needed. "Brain fade" sometimes makes the ability to make a good judgment fade away.
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A Great Email About Turbulence Before And After SOAR
Dear Capt Tom,
I missed my flight from Sacramento, CA, to Louisville, KY, last week
due to rain (a serious storm slowed down traffic and when you have
1.5 hours to drive to an airport, you lose serious time, too).
Whatever anticipatory anxiety I was having (though, comparatively to
most every other flight I'd approached in my lifetime, it was pretty
low to begin with) vanished completely, of course, when the airline
agent refused to let me board the plane. But after having breakfast
at the airport by myself, I jumped on another flight to Atlanta and
spent the night there, luxuriating, before picking up a morning
flight to Louisville -- as if I did that sort of thing every day.
I was so tired, having gotten up at 4 a.m. to
catch the flight I missed, and waiting at the airport for five hours
for the next flight, and not eating really all that well, and not
being all that terribly anxious about flying (did I just say that??),
and realizing I didn't have to go all the way to Louisville that day,
that I could break up my trip over two days, that I actually fell
asleep on the way to Atlanta!
And if that wasn't surreal enough for
me, I was sometimes a bit annoyed by the turbulence that occasionally
wakened me. I awoke a couple of times and ranked the turbulence, on a
scale of 1-10, at 4. I was proud of myself for that, Capt, because
there was a time...
Well, prior to the SOAR program (and 9/11), I had taken a flight back
east and encountered turbulence so strong, I ranked it 9.99 on a
scale of 1-10, and expected the airliner to explode at any second.
The captain, whom I'd met prior to the flight, had told me I could
send questions to him via the flight attendants, so, on the back of a
vomit bag, I asked him to rank the turbulence we were in (I really
just wanted him to know how bad I thought it was and that he should
somehow make it stop). I gave the bag to the flight attendant and she
took it to the cockpit. After what seemed like an eternity, during
which time I had decided the turbulence ranking had gone from 9.99 to
something like 22.7 on a scale of 1-10, the flight attendant finally
brought back my answer. On the back of the vomit bag, beneath my
question, the Captain wrote, "On a scale of 1-10, I rank this
turbulence at 2."
I told you that story so you could better understand this one. I was
annoyed on my way to Atlanta, like I said, a couple of times because
the turbulence was so rough, it had awakened me. Capt, I never
thought I would be writing you what I just wrote there, that
turbulence didn't terrorize me, but annoyed me! That it woke me,
which meant I was sleeping on an airliner -- in flight! Are you
getting this?
Toward the end of the flight, I got up to use the restroom. The
flight had considerably smoothed out by then. I met a flight
attendant along the way and commented, "So what'd you think of that
turbulence a while ago? Not a big deal, right?" She rolled her eyes
and said, "That was quite rough!" Excuse me? "So how would you rank
it," I asked, "on a scale of 1-10?" She replied, "Oh, I'd say it was
rather high, about a 7 or 8. We don't usually get it that bad, not in
my experience."
And there I was, Capt, jostled from my sleep, annoyed, and ranking it
at 4.
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An Email About Anticipatory Anxiety Due To Timeline Compression
When I read your newsletter this week on anticipatory anxiety about when we try and cram all our thoughts about a flight into a few seconds, it sends out a bunch of stress hormones and we get anxiety. You said it's like trying to eat a Big Mac in one bite. That made me think about life in general when you try to see the whole picture all at once, instead breaking down the parts, you feel overwhelmed.
It reminded me of when I came to NY for the Soar Fest and stopped at the Container Store to buy some organizing items before going to Soar Fest. I opened the door and the store was huge with hundreds of things to see. A wave of anxiety came over me. I had pondered the whole store all at once when I first looked in, and completely overwhelmed myself.
I didn't know how to take it all in, so I decided to start on the left side of the store and take each part of the store section by section, taking my time, which completely reduced my anxiety to zero. I saw just about everything in the store and picked out the things I wanted with no feeling of being overwhelmed.
It's a profound concept that you brought up in the newsletter. My lesson at the Container Store is the same thing you learned from your friend's reaction in St Mark's Plaza -- overwhelm. You said, "that while some take in such a view item by item, others take in all the items at once; and when all those items are taken in at once (rather than one by one) it is overwhelming."
This is going to change how I look at anything that causes me anxiety. Take my time and break it down into parts and digest each one.
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A Writer Wants To Know If Driving, Instead Of Flying, Got You Into An Accident
Amanda Ripley, a writer for Time Magazine, is working on a book about how people deal with risk.
She emailed, "To do this, I will be highlighting a couple of studies that show that many thousands of Americans decided to drive instead of fly to their destinations after 9/11. These studies, after controlling for a variety of other factors, found that an additional 1,500 to 2,000 people died on the roads in the two years after 9/11 because of this decision (since flying remained much safer than driving)."
Amanda is looking for specific situations in which people who decided to drive instead of fly, unfortunately, did indeed have a car accident.
Examples which illustrate the statistics may help readers of her book viscerally understand the real human meaning of the statistics.
If you have had an accident because you drove instead of flying (or know about one personally) please call Amanda at 202-861-4018. Or email her at: amanda_ripley@timemagazine.com
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Video Of Airliner Testing
Here are some video links that may give you confidence in the strength and the performance of airliners. The first is a test Boeing did of the 777 wing. The wing flexed an amazing amount, well over twenty feet, before it broke. Perhaps it also helps to know that it broke at just the stress the engineers had expected via their design calculations, and that the stress is many times greater than an airliner could ever encouter in flight, no matter how severe the turbulence.
Though you might see a wing flex twenty inches in turbulence, this test shows the wing can flex over twenty feet without breaking.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=6Uo0C01Fwb8
The next is a test to show airliner performance in case the plane needs to be stopped after accelerating to over 200 MPH. This test was done at the maximum allowable takeoff weight for the 777.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=l5N2uBqJbVU&mode=related&search=
The next is a 777 landing in a crosswind of over 40 MPH.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=wmDdQz6QlFs&mode=related&search=
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This Week In Patrick's "Ask The Pilot"
Fear and loathing in the skies over New York City. Should Gotham's famous VFR "corridor" be closed to leisure flyers?
To read the full story, click here: http://www.salon.com/tech/col/smith/2006/10/20/askthepilot205/.
Entry to Salon is free by watching a brief advertisement.
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