(Lack of ) Communication Caused the Crash

"Klotz sees himself as a subordinate. It's not his job to solve the crisis. It's the captain's- and the captain is exhausted and isn't saying anything. Then there's the domineering Kennedy Airport air traffic controllers ordering the planes around. Klotz is trying to tell them he's in trouble. But he's using his own cultural language, speaking as a subordinate would to a superior. The controllers, though, aren't Colombian. They're low-power distance New yorkers. They don't see any hierarchical gap between themselves and the pilots in the air, and to them, mitigated speech from a pilot doesn't mean the speaker is being appropriately deferential to a superior. It means the pilot doesn't have a problem." (207)

In Malcolm Gladwell's book "Outliers" he examines the pathways to success (and, in doing so, failure). In one chapter, "The Ethnic Theory of Plane Crashes" he details the cultural impact on the likelihood of plane crashes. One specific example was Avianca flight 052, which crashed 16 kilometres away from Kennedy Airport, New York, in January 1990. There hadn't been any mechanical failures; the aircraft had run out of fuel. Also, this wasn't because they hadn't had enough to make it from Colombia to New York; they had, in fact, circled around Kennedy Airport several times.

Gladwell's explanations for a horrible crash that killed 78 people are astounding. The pilots made no flying errors but all their mistakes were in communication with the air traffic controllers. One pilot mentioned that they were "running out of fuel" but because airplanes are always losing fuel, this has little meaning. They didn't state that they were in a state of emergency, or that they couldn't make a fly-around. They also didn't request to go to a close, but less busy airport such as Philadelphia. The pilots simply took directions from the air traffic controllers and tried to subtlely hint that they were not going to make it unless they landed immediately.

In reading the flight log, I was astonished that anyone would put so many lives at risk because they were trying to be polite and because they felt inferior to the air traffic controllers. As an American pilot said to Gladwell, "no American would put up with that... They would say 'Listen, buddy. I have to land.' " (202)

The fact that the pilots were Colombian actually had a serious consequence- they didn't believe that they had the authority to tell the controllers what to do, nor did they truly let them know that there was a problem. Different societies, as Gladwell explains, have different levels of response to hierarchy, and comfort making their opinions known to their superiors. Colombians have a "high power-distance" culture, which means they feel that they can't talk back to their superiors. In another example, a pre-reformed Korean Air is examined. Korean Air used to have an incredibly high number of plane crashes, which was due to a similar issue of communication between superiors and subordinates.

I was amazed in reading this book how much our culture truly defines who we are and how we succeed in different things. Even our ability to make others aware of life-threatening situations is due, in part at least, to the kind of society that we are accustomed to.