Everything Nonfiction

My take on the Northwest 188 incident

I'll say up front that I in no way take what happened aboard Northwest 188 lightly. The pilots made a very serious mistake that can't be explained away. At the same time, they made a mistake. People make mistakes. They have admitted their mistake and, as far as I know, have been totally truthful in telling the authorities what happened. So while the media, and just about everyone else, is out to crucify these guys, I see it as an opportunity to learn from what happened and possibly make some changes that might help prevent a similar thing from happening again.

Now the traveling public may find this hard to believe, but overflying a fix where an action is required and that action not taking place is not that uncommon of an occurrence. A good example is overflying a top of descent point and not beginning a descent or requesting a descent. Let's say that you're a couple of miles away from the top of descent and just as you're about to ask for lower you get a call from the flight attendant. So you get involved in dealing with whatever issue the flight attendant has and pass right over the TOD. It happens. The difference might be that the other pilot catches it and brings it to the flying pilot's attention. Maybe the controller sees that the crew hasn't asked for lower and assigns them a lower altitude. In either case the error chain has been broken.

The reason flying is so safe is because there is redundancy and safeguards that are in place to catch errors as they happen before they can cascade into more serious problems. The perfect flight is a goal seldom achieved. For the Northwest crew to make the mistake they made there had to be a series of errors that went unchecked. First there is the loss of communications. It happens all the time. A missed hand-off. A distraction. It's night time. There isn't a lot of chatter going on. After a while the crew realizes that they haven't heard anything so they get on the radio and try to reestablish contact. Sometimes a controller might enlist the aid of another aircraft to try and reach the out-of-contact plane. Sometimes the controller might have another plane contact their company dispatch and have an ACARS message sent directly to the plane. This usually solves the problem. From what I've read, all of this took place but the Northwest crew still didn't realize that they were out of radio contact for an extended period of time.

The crew says that they were using their laptops and were discussing a new crew scheduling system and simply lost track of time and failed to monitor the progress of the flight. That is a hard thing for any pilot to admit to. But it sounds sincere to me. It's what happened. Because they had their laptops in front of them they missed the numerous messages flashing on their flight displays. Should they have been checking those displays? Obviously.

More than likely the crew must have been cleared directly to a fix, either an arrival fix or perhaps even the airport itself. So there would have been very little turning going on, which might have refocused their attention. There wasn't any weather to contend with, so that was another opportunity they would have had to avert their mistake. There may be more information to come out of the investigation that may shed even more light on this incident. So I won't speculate any further than I already have. But there are a number of issues that I plan to comment on as this incident progresses: the role automation may have played; the role of the media in how they routinely get things wrong; the problems associated with long times in cruise flight with automated aircraft; the arguments for and against airline policies that prohibit the use of personal laptops in the cockpit. That last one deserves a quick final comment.

The Airbus operating manual or FCOM is provided in digital form. I don't know for positive that Northwest has laptops on board with the FCOM installed. But I do know that many airlines do. So if a crew is permitted to open a laptop in a noncritical phase of flight to review something in the manual, how is that more safe than a pilot looking at a new crew scheduling system on his personal laptop?

If I knew then

If you could travel back in time and meet yourself as a teenager, what three things would you tell yourself?
Submitted by Digital Scrapbooking.

1. You have to approach the girl. Don't wait for her to approach you.

2. Buy stock in that computer company you liked so much. The one called Apple.

3. Don't sweat the small stuff: It's all small stuff.

The demise of LangaAir

So what happened to LangaAir? LangaAir was, up until five days ago, a flight school. I happened to work there as a flight instructor. I wasn't doing it as a career choice. Let's just say that I was between jobs and looking for something different to do while I waited for things to turn around. I was eighteen years old the last time I gave any flight instruction. A lot has changed since then.

The last plane I flew before making the switch to flight instructing was an Airbus 320. Going from an A320 to C172 is a bit of a culture shock. I hadn't flown a single engine aircraft in over thirty years. Once I accepted the fact that this was going to be my new office, I started to enjoy it. One thing I've learned while accumulating close to 18,000 hours is that, for the most part, airplanes fly the same. You pull back on the controls and the plane climbs. You push forward and it descends.

Things were slow at first at Langa. LangaAir, which had been in business in Alton, Illinois for some twenty years, had just expanded to Chesterfield at the Spirit of St. Louis airport after the demise of another flight school several months earlier. Scott Langa, the son of original owner Irv Langa, was running the operation at Spirit. Scott is a smart, hard working, ambitious, and honest individual. I was immediately impressed with what he was able to accomplish in such a short time. The fact that he was able to expand at all during one of the worst economic downturns in four decades says a lot. Let's face it, flying isn't cheap. But Scott knew the business and knew how to attract customers. And little by little the customers came. There were the renters: pilot's already qualified but in need of an aircraft to rent. There were the club members: these were qualified pilots who wanted to fly more than just once or twice a year. And then there were the students.

In the short time that I was at Langa I saw every type of student: the career minded eighteen year olds; the twenty-something adventure seekers; the older mid-thirties and mid-forties students who had always dreamed about learning to fly and now were in a position to do just that; and even some who were too young to actually get a license but had parents willing to shell out $200 an hour just so they could occupy their kid's time with something constructive. Every week potential new students walked through the doors wanting information about learning to fly. From my perch looking on from the outside it looked like Scott was doing everything right. All you had to do was Google flight instruction and St. Louis and LangaAir was the number one search result. Links to the LangaAir web site were everywhere. Every pilot in St. Louis and anyone who ever even remotely thought about learning to fly received a flyer in the mail. At Spirit we were set up to give the FAA required knowledge tests. We offered training in G1000 equipped Skyhawks. We even had one of the newer Elite simulators installed so we could give simulator training on days when the other planes were grounded due to weather.

So what happened? I really don't know what happened. I suspect that an overly ambitious expansion and a tight credit market are to blame. I don't fault anyone in the company. Everyone I met was top notch. For those who are affected by this turn of events, I hope that things will work out in your favor. I hope to see everyone flying again soon.

The picture to the right is one of my students who had just soloed. We gave him a new "I just soloed at Langa" shirt.

MSNBC Documentary

I just got word that the MSNBC documentary on aircraft ditchings will air on July 12 at 10:00 pm EDT on MSNBC. I'll put up some links as soon as I have more info.

Update 1:

The promo is up on MSNBC.com. I'd provide a link but there isn't one. You have to search for the video. To find the promo, do the following: load and play any video off of MSNBC.com; pause the video; on the left hand side you will see a list of categories; choose the following categories: shows:MSNBC:Documentaries; then look for the video called Why Planes Crash: Brace For Impact. 

Continental Flight 61 and the media

There's nothing more irritating than when the media tries to report on a story and distorts the facts because of ignorance. I've listened to a number of respected news agencies try to turn this flight into a major emergency. One reporter even stated that the first officer is on board just in case the Captain can't land. Are you kidding me? The only difference between the captain and first officer is their date of hire. Another network reported that the first officer has at least 1500 hours of flight time, so he is certainly qualified to land the plane. As if this wasn't bad enough, the media has tried to drum up drama by reporting on the weather and how it was going to make the landing more difficult. Note to media: Next time you want to report on a story that you know nothing about, contact someone who does. The next thing we're going to hear is how one of the first officers is going to get a three million dollar book deal to write about how he landed the plane.

The real story that is going to come out of this is the pilot's age - he was reported to be 60 (or 61 depending on which news channel you listen to). This is unfortunate. I just hope Congress doesn't jump on this and try to reverse the mandatory retirement age. If anything, the fact that there is always more than one pilot on board should be sufficient to assuage any concerns. This flight proves that the current rule is safe.

My condolences to the captain's family.

What happened to Air France Flight 447?

As news continues to trickle in about the Air France accident more pieces of the puzzle emerge. Here's what we know so far: no bodies have been found floating in the crash area (as of this writing); the ECAM alerting system automatically reported multiple failures prior to lost contact (the Airbus has the capability of sending data on the aircraft's systems directly to maintenance); there was severe weather in the area; there is a possibility of an explosion caused by a terrorist attack.

So let's look at the known facts and see what they tell us. I'll start with the bomb scenario. There has been some speculation about a bomb because of an earlier bomb threat on a different aircraft. But what would the chances be of a bomb going off at the exact time that the aircraft entered an area of severe weather? It's zero. Plus no one has accepted responsibility for such an attack. There is no chance that a bomb brought the plane down.

How about the multiple system failures? I was initially surprised to hear the head of Air France state that he had little hope for survivors considering that he made the statement before the wreckage had even been found. That tells me he had more information than he was divulging. That information was released today and it concerned the multiple failures, which indicates the plane broke apart in flight.

What about the lack of bodies? Other accidents involving aircraft that have ended up in the water all have had bodies floating near the wreckage. That tells me that the fuselage was in tact at the moment of impact. It tells me that everyone was seated with their seat belts fastened (as would be the case on an aircraft about to enter an area of expected turbulence).

So that leaves the weather. Why would a pilot continue to fly into a thunderstorm? This may come as a surprise to some, but the weather and communications capability of an airliner flying over the Atlantic are about the same as they were when Lindberg was flying mail over the midwest. The only thing they have is the on-board weather radar system. Cessna 172s used as flight trainers have better weather capabilities. You would think that in this day of satellite communications that the plane would be in constant contact with air controllers. This, however, is not the case. When you fly across the Atlantic you communicate using an HF radio to a person on the ground who has to relay your requests to Air Traffic Control. It's sort of like talking on a ham radio. Add into this the new RVSM (reduced vertical separation minimum) and you have a case where a pilot who needs to change altitude or direction because of weather may not be able to get clearance in time before reaching the weather. In a region where there is a large area of bad weather and numerous aircraft needing to deviate this becomes a problem because that lone guy working the HF frequency becomes overloaded with requests. If the pilot deviates without clearance he risks the chance of deviating into the path of another aircraft. This is what I believed happened in this case. They saw the weather. They asked for a deviation or different altitude and wasn't able to receive a clearance in time to do so, so they picked what they thought was the best course through the weather. Unfortunately, they picked wrong.

Update 1

So now they're saying that there is no wreckage. That would explain the lack of bodies. This story gets more compelling by the minute. They spotted a pallet and claimed it came from the plane. Didn't make sense to me then and now we know it wasn't from the plane. But what about the report of seats and life preservers? That was the report that convinced me that they had found the crash site. Now nothing is certain including the reported oil slick.

I've heard a lot of reports recently about problems with the airspeed indicators. Now I don't have any more information than what has been publicly released. But I find it hard to agree with the theory that the pitot tube iced up from super cooled water droplets. First of all, there isn't just one pitot tube. There are three. One for the captain, one for the first officer, and one for the standby system. Additionally, the pitot tubes are heated. So none of the claims about frozen pitot tubes makes sense. Without having the actual data in front of me, my best guess is that the weird speed indications were an accurate representation of what was happening with the aircraft when it ran into severe turbulence. You only have to fly into a thunderstorm once to know how dangerous they can be. A thunderstorm with tops to 50,000 is a super cell. String four or five of those together and you have a bad situation.

My theory remains that they saw the weather on the radar. They tried to avoid the weather by requesting a change of altitude and or heading but was unable to receive a clearance in time. So they were forced to try and pick their way through. The plane experienced severe turbulence that caused structural damage (like a wing breaking off). That would explain the speed fluctuations and multiple system failures. The plane then spiraled down to the ocean's ssurface.

The story of the green carnation

Today is St. Patrick's Day. I'm not Irish, but this is a day that I celebrate. It was thirty years ago today that I made one of the best decisions of my life. It was the day I asked my wife, Lynn, to marry me.

 

I lived in Cleveland at the time. I had invited Lynn to come to Cleveland for a visit. I don't remember who paid for the ticket, but I'm guessing it probably wasn't me. The second day of Lynn’s visit was St. Patrick ’s Day.  We spent the day in downtown Cleveland enjoying the St. Patrick’s Day celebration. I bought her a green carnation to pin in her hair. That night we had plans to go to a night club that sat atop the Sheraton Airport Hotel. The night club was called the Final Approach. This was back when Lynn wore dresses and high heels. She looked fantastic. I pulled out a box containing an engagement ring and said “here’s something to go with your outfit.” That was it. It was the best I could come up with. Sh didn't seem to mind the unorthodox proposal. 

 

Three years later we were still in Cleveland. I was running to the store to pick up some grocery items for another St. Patrick's Day celebration when I spotted a sign that read “three green carnations for a dollar.” So I bought the three carnations and proudly presented them to Lynn. It hadn’t dawned on me that it was the three year anniversary for us getting engaged. After all, how many people celebrate the day they got engaged? Lynn, however, saw the three green carnations as just that – a symbolic gesture commemorating a momentous time in our relationship. I didn’t tell her that they were three for a dollar until much later. Anyway, from that time on I would buy her green carnations to coincide with our anniversary.

On our tenth anniversary I decided to replace the green carnations with a single rose. Ten green carnations just didn't look right. The next year it was one rose and one green carnation, representing our eleventh anniversary. I haven’t missed an anniversary yet.

On the kitchen table sits a vase with three roses and a little baby’s breath. I also have a beer in my hands. We've already had our own private celebration. Lynn still looks fantastic in a dress or not. So here's to Lynn, my better half. I still love you.

Why bookstores matter

I happen to be a technology aficionado. I believe strongly that eBooks are the wave of the future. They're better for the environment; they offer advantages such as hyperlinking that books cannot, they're cheaper than physical books; in the not too distant future they'll be able to offer advantages such as animation, sound, and video. The only thing keeping me from buying an eReader like the Kindle right now is the cost. But despite the many benefits offered by eBooks, there will always be a need for bookstores.

About sixty percent of the books I choose to read I learn about through reviews. Unfortunately, that means I miss a lot of great books. As it is now, only a small portion of the books published get reviewed. With newspapers and magazines reducing or cutting their book sections, there is even less chance for readers to learn about new books. That's where the bookstore comes in. The other forty percent of the books I read I discover by browsing my local bookstore.

No online site can compete with the browsing experience that a bookstore offers. I am first attracted to the title and cover. Next I'll read the back cover and the publisher's description of what the book is about. Then I'll leaf through the book. If I'm interested in the book, then I'll look at the price. Anything over say $24 and I'll put the book down and get it from the library. All of this takes me about one to two minutes. Then I'm on to the next book. It's a lot harder to do this with an eBook and an online site.

The best bookstores for browsing are those that group books by fiction and nonfiction. Borders wins the browsing experience hands down over Barnes & Noble. I can go into Borders and immediately find all the new nonfiction titles. The same is true for biographies and nonfiction paperbacks. In a Barnes & Noble store you have to go all over the store to find what you're looking for, which means that they lose a lot of sales.

New authors are often advised that getting into bookstores is not that important. I disagree. Having your book on the shelf may make the difference between getting the sale or not getting it. I experienced this recently with my book 35 Miles From Shore. The book tells the true story of a 1970 airliner that ditched in the Caribbean Sea. When US Airways Flight 1549 ditched in the Hudson interest in my book took off. This was due in part because of interviews I did immediately after the accident. My Amazon sales ranking went as low as 2,000. But I had very few books in bookstores. So not only did I miss the casual browser who could have discovered my book, but I also lost many sales from people who went looking for the book but passed when they learned that they would have to order it.

A bookstore is a destination. As long as they keep prices reasonable and make it easy to browse, I'll keep coming.

My Oscar pick

I've finally had a chance to see all five Oscar nominated films. I've read elsewhere that some are saying that there are some weak contenders this year. While that has been in true in years past (Brokeback Mountain, There Will be Blood), my take is totally opposite. I think all five films are strong.

It's interesting to note that two of the nominated films are nonfiction. Frost/Nixon may have been based on a play, but the interviews did take place. And Milk is based on the true story of Harvey Milk. While I liked all three, I don't think either film has a chance of winning.

That leaves Slumdog Millionaire, The Curios Case of Benjamin Button, and The Reader.I thought all three were excellent. My favorite of the three is The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.I liked everything about the film. It's the only one of the five that I would pay to see again.

So which one will take home the Oscar? Everyone likes an underdog and Slumdog Millionaire has already taken home a few awards. So I'm going with Slumdog, but I'll be rooting for Benjamin Button.

BlogTalkRadio Interview for Ijustfinished.com

I recently appeared as a guest on a one hour blogtalkradio program for the web site and radio show www.Ijustfinished.com. The interview was not only about my recent book 35 Miles From Shore, but it was also a behind the scnes look at the creative process that went into the development of the book.

I have ben contributing reviews to the site for the past several months and was glad to the featured author on yesterday's show. You can listen to the interview below.

Life and Death at 37,000 feet

From the title of this article you might get the impression that this is a story about some in flight disaster, but that's not what's on my mind. Lately I've been thinking about life and death stories that occur every day some 30,000 plus feet below me as I make my way across the land and sea.

I've been a pilot for a long time. A typical flight will take me over thousands of miles in a single evening. The plane I'm flying will be within sight of perhaps thirty million or more people on any given trip. Now only a few of those thirty million people will actually notice us, and the same is true for us. We don't notice individuals from 37,000 feet up. We do, however, occasionally see things that hint at something more profound that's going on below. Maybe it's a fire that lights up the night sky. Maybe it's the flashing lights of a police car as it races along an isolated road.

Two recent stories made me think of this connection. The first is the story of little Caylee Anthony. I happen to fly up and down the Florida coast on a weekly basis. I don't fly over the spot where the remains thought to be those of Caylee Anthony were found, but I do fly within sight of it. That means that it's very possible as I made my way to Ft. Myers or St. Petersburg last summer that I could have been in the air as little Caylee's life was ending. That's a sobering thought.

The second story involves a life and death story in the Caribbean. One of my destinations is Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic. Recently there was a story of two men found adrift at sea. They had been adrift for some three weeks. They were the only two survivors among forty people who were making the trip from the Dominican Republic to Puerto Rico.

Now our flight path doesn't take us directly over the spot where these men were found, but it takes us pretty close. Maybe even within sight. Think about that for a second. Here we are with a plane load of tourists going to the Caribbean for a little R&R and 37,000 feet below us forty people in a small boat are fighting for their lives.

I often look down at the water from above. Small boats are hard to make out. Two men in a boat adrift at sea would be impossible to identify. But I'm sure they were able to see the contrails of planes flying overhead. Maybe they even saw our plane and tried to signal for help. But we didn't see them. Nor did our passengers see them. They were watching the in-flight movie or taking a nap.

To give you a better idea of what I'm talking about, take a look at the December view from the cockpit image. Click on the image to bring up a larger version and take a good look. Is there a life and death story happening down there beneath those clouds?

December view from the cockpit.

Best of Everythingnonfiction for 2008

Here is my list of the best nonfiction books, films, and documentaries for 2008. To make my list, each book or film had to receive at least a four star rating. The release date has no bearing on my choices. This list simply represents the best of what I personally saw or read this past year.

Since 2008 isn't over yet and there are some books and films that I plan to finish and see before the end of the year, I will revise this list in January.

The best nonfiction films of 2008

American Gangster

The Sea Inside

The Assassination of Jesse James

The Great Debaters

Recount

The Counterfeiters

Changeling

The best nonfiction books of 2008

Who's Your Caddy?

Money For Nothing

The Omnivore's Dilemma

Escape From the Deep

The World Without Us

The Botany of Desire

Touching History

1421

For The Thrill Of It

35 Miles From Shore

The best documentaries of 2008

The Trials of Darryl Hunt

No End in Sight

My Kid Could Paint That

Deliver Us From Evil

The 11th Hour

Surfwise: The Amazing True Odyssey of the Paskowitz Family

Joe Louis: American Hero...Betrayed

Taxi to the Dark Side

Nanking

Bigger, Stronger, Faster

Dear Zachary

Fuel

Standard Operating Procedure

Getting up to speed with technorati

I'm embarrased to admit that I have been blogging for almost a year now and I have not taken advantage of tags. No wonder no one ever visits my site. Hopefully that will change now that I'm a little more educated.

Technorati Profile

Missing you

Allison, hard to believe that it's been ten years since we first met. I always envisioned telling you the story every year on your birthday. I'm sure by now you would have been sick of hearing it. I'm not talking about the day you were born. There was too much going on then with all the doctors and nurses surrounding you. I'm not talking about later that night either when you were on the ventilator.

I'm talking about the next day when we came to see you in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit. You were hooked up to the ECMO machine. We were on one of the top floors at Children's. Outside the window we could see Forest Park all covered in snow. Your mom and I had spent a sleepless night worrying about you. But when we came to see you in the morning, everything had calmed down. You were lying there hooked up with wires and tubes and bandages. That was when we formally met. I'm sure you don't remember because you were taking some pretty heavy duty drugs at the time. But I sure remember it.

I had my camera with me a lot those first few days. I had it with me the first time you saw me. That's when I took this picture of you. I always wondered what you must have been thinking when you opened your eyes and saw me standing over you with the camera in your face.

I've been thinking about you a lot these past few days. I try to imagine what you would look like now. Every time I see a girl around the same age that you would be, I stop and stare. I wonder if that's how you might have looked.

I see a lot of kids at the airport, traveling with their parents. I sometimes envision you and me and your mom traveling together. We probably would have been to Disney World a half dozen times by now.

I think about what kind of music you would have liked. What books you would be reading? What movies you would want to see? I think about what gift I might have bought you for your  tenth birthday. I thought maybe an Ipod, but I'm guessing that you would have had one of those already. Maybe a beginner's set of golf clubs along with some lessons. That way we could have played golf together.

There haven't been too many days since we first met that I haven't thought about you. I was your father for six and a half weeks and you were my daughter. That will never change. I miss you Allison. Happy  birthday.

Best of Everything Nonfiction for 2007

First, a few words about this list. I didn't start this blog until July. So there are a few books and films that I read or saw before I started the blog that warrant mention here but are not reviewed. Secondly, this list contains books, films, and documentaries that I personally saw or read this year. In many cases the actual release date may have been several years earlier as in the case of Jesus Land which was first published in 2005. And while the focus of this blog is nonfiction, I also enjoy plenty of fiction books and films. But in keeping with the focus of the blog I have limited my list to only nonfiction titles. So here is my list of the best nonfiction books, films, and documentaries for 2007. If you saw or read something that you would like to recommend, please do so. Maybe it will make next year's list.

Best nonfiction books:

Manhunt
F5
A Long Way Gone
Lone Survivor
Jesus Land

Best documentaries

Who Killed The Electric Car?
Romantico
Ghosts of Abu Ghraib
Who The #$&% is Jackson Pollock
Shut Up and Sing
Sicko

Best nonfiction films

Letters From Iwo Jima
Zodiac
Breach

Up and running

It's taken a couple of days of hard work, but the everything nonfiction blog appears to be up and running normally. I'll be testing the feed with this post. I'll also be adding additional content in the days ahead. If you encounter any problems, please be sure to contact me. Thanks.

Emilio@EmilioCorsetti.com