Phil Greenspun debunks Malcolm Gladwell on airline safety
philip.greenspun.com
philip.greenspun.com
First of all, Gladwell does not at any point claim that American or Canadian pilots are "the best" due to the power distance index--in fact, he doesn't claim that at all. If you look at the book, the U.S. has the fifth-lowest index (lower being "better" for these purposes), behind New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and Ireland, and he never says anything in the chapter that even implies that American pilots are best.
Nor does he say anywhere that the power distance index is the primary cause of plane crashes. Indeed, he explicitly says that any accident is caused by 6-7 small mistakes building on one another without being caught--something that could quite possibly be caused by inexperience, as Greenspun notes--but which can be exacerbated by two people in the cockpit unable to communicate in a direct way.
So while I think the article is a useful and interesting theory about differences in rates of crashes (though it should be noted that U.S. airlines do not have an overwhelmingly better safety record than, say, major European ones [1]), it is ultimately another in a series of "hey, let me overgeneralize what Malcolm Gladwell is saying and back it up with minor factual gaffes I found in the book" articles.
I don't recall that chapter being about ethnocentrism or even about how to fly planes, but rather about power dynamics, and reverence versus the "entitlement" that he talks about elsewhere in the book.
Gladwell's larger point is that a) modern crashes are composed of a large number of crashes on planes and that b) cultural inhibition of direct communication can contribute to crashes to the extent that a more junior position feels unable to speak directly to the pilot.
I have my reservations about Gladwell, as described here: http://jseliger.com/2009/07/28/outliers-and-blink , but the pilot chapter isn't among his weaker so far as I can tell.
Gladwell's larger point is that a) modern crashes are composed of a large number of crashes on planes and that b) cultural inhibition of direct communication can contribute to crashes to the extent that a more junior position feels unable to speak directly to the pilot.
I have my reservations about Gladwell, as described here: http://jseliger.com/2009/07/28/outliers-and-blink , but the pilot chapter isn't among his weaker so far as I can tell.
The error chain leading up to an accident is an old concept. The key to preventing accidents is to break the chain, which is typically best done by a pilot who has a lot of extra situational awareness. Sadly, situational awareness mostly comes with experience, so educating a 150-hour pilot about the error chain is not going to enable him or her to deal with a challenging situation as well as a 5000-hour pilot.
To say "Gladwell comes to the conclusion that foreigners are unsafe because they are ... foreign." and "If only everyone were American or Canadian, the world would be a better and safer place." is absurd.
It is true that Gladwell talked about low power-distance-index (PIDI) cultures and how pilots from low-PDI cultures were likely to act differently from pilots from high-PDI cultures. However, he didn't say that American pilots were superior to "foreigners". On the contrary, Gladwell mentions a study showing that countries like Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa etc. had a lower PDI than the US. He also mentioned a study showing that Jamaica, Singapore, Sweden, Denmark etc. cultures were better able to tolerate/manage ambiguity than America.
As for Canada, I don't think Gladwell even mentions Canada in that chapter.
It is funny that the guy should have written a whole post to attack Gladwell and started the post with a blatant misrepresentation of what Gladwell wrote
Come to think of it, is the USA a major net exporter of airline-pilot talent? And if not, why not? Is the fix in, as it is with doctors and lawyers? (Getting a medical degree is one thing, moving to the USA is another, but getting licensed to practice medicine in the USA without a US medical degree is, alas, a third.) Or is the language and cultural barrier too high? (I was under the impression that international airline pilots all spoke at least enough English to communicate with air traffic control, which is to say: pretty decent English. You'd think that you could have a pretty decent life as an expatriate American airline pilot.) Or would it just cost more than folks are willing to pay?
Dunno, but I have a hunch the answer is yes. (Not "net", but we probably do export.)
I was very surprised when I was flying from Hong Kong to Shanghai on Dragonair a few months ago; both the captain and first officer were white guys with American accents. Not what I expected from an airline that only flies from mainland China to Hong Kong. (I also flew on Cathay Pacific on that trip, and the flight crew had British accents. They were not Chinese, which is what surprised me.)
So I assume there are some pilots that choose to work for a foreign carrier rather than a US carrier. It makes sense, because English is an important skill, and the pay must be about the same. If my work life would become less stressful by moving to Hong Kong, I would gladly do it. I don't see why pilots would be any different.
I live in China, and a couple years ago there were rumors going around among the foreigners in the city I live in that a Chinese airline (I think it was China Southern) was considering moving all of its foreign pilots from Shanghai to this city in order to cut costs.
I have also run into American pilots flying a Thai Airways plane (we were one of the last groups off of the plane, and then we stopped to rearrange who carried what luggage, and crew caught up with us in the hallway).
Coming only from personal observations, it sure seems like it's an exporter (I'm not sure about how major), but only to certain types of countries - specifically, prosperous non-European ones. Places where those pilots can live decent expatriate lifestyles: think China, Taiwan, Malaysia, UAE, Kuwait, etc. My experience is less varied on developing-world airlines, but I can't recall running into any Western pilots working for Kenya Airways or Royal Air Maroc (the two I have flown most recently).
This makes sense, in some way - no matter what, Kenya Airways is unlikely to attract someone who spent a bunch of their time in Orlando to move to Nairobi, but with the right amount of money I could see those people moving to Shanghai for a few years to get some seniority and time in control of a larger plane than they would have if they had stayed with Continental.
Interestingly, I "see" (hear) very few non-national Captains flying on Western European airlines. My theory is that all those countries have Air Forces of their own, and that their aviation sectors are small enough that they can rely on ex-military pilots for the majority of their piloting needs.
In a country that doesn't have a regional airline system, there is really no other way than to create captains out of people who have spent nearly all of their flying hours as first officer (second in command).
And this "Unless the country is very large, there won't be any regional airlines." seems silly. I haven't heard of any European country with no regional airline. Even Iceland has their own with only 2 "real cities".
There's a lot of hand-waving in the post. I'd really like to stick some [citation needed] in there.
I think Gladwell would largely agree with this description of his writings, or at least with the part that says that his writings should be approached skeptically and that they don't purport to be scholarly. From the article "Malcolm Gladwell's Method" in the Wall Street Journal on November 15, 2008,
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122671211614230261.html?mod=...
an interview by Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg:
"[Q:] Do you worry that you extrapolate too much from too little?
"[A:] No. It's better to err on the side of over-extrapolation. These books are playful in the sense that they regard ideas as things to experiment with. I'm happy if somebody reads my books and reaches a conclusion that is different from mine, as long as the ideas in the book cause them to think. You have to be willing to put pressure on theories, to push the envelope. That's the fun part, the exciting part. If you are writing an intellectual adventure story, why play it safe? I'm not out to convert people. I want to inspire and provoke them."
In other words, he's basically an entertainer. Debunking Gladwell is like "debunking" the historical accuracy of Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
The downside is his books ending up in the hands of people whose capacity for entertaining novel ideas far exceeds their capacity for rational critical thinking.
[0] "Bullshit" in the sense of H. Frankfurt's technical term for assertions intended neither to inform nor deceive.
A typical 16-hour day...nowhere for the pilot to rest. He or she will be sitting near a gate, in uniform...trying to shut out the noise of thousands of passengers walking by and hundreds of public address announcements.
It seems like a quick-and-easy solution would be to have the Pilots' union demand access to the airline's network lounges (or better yet, make it an FAA requirement so that they can get into off-brand lounges at smaller airports) in their next collective agreement. Union members would commit to not taking advantage of the free food or the computer terminals, and the airlines would in exchange let them hang out there as it's quieter and gives them somewhere to get a bit restful before their next leg.
And if the airlines don't want to fill up their own lounges with free staff (as opposed to passengers), contract out the problem - give the pilots PriorityPass memberships, so they'd be going into lounges that aren't their own, and that are explicitly OK with people paying to get in.
I think Outliers boils down to "if you have the lucky background at the right time and the right place, you will be given more and bigger opportunities." The rest is simply interesting anectdotes.
"You can make up a new title if you want, but if you put gratuitous editorial spin on it, the editors may rewrite it."
On one hand, Greenspun is a pretty noted Libertarian and not a fan of the Kennedys. On the other, he often references flying to Martha's Vineyard for day trips in his other writings about aviation, and it seems like a pretty sensible place to fly to if you're into civil aviation and looking for a day flight somewhere from Boston (where I believe he's based).
Nothing says it can't be both - it's a location that naturally comes to his mind, his point is valid (weather conditions can be dangerous there, Kennedys aside), and it happens to be a dig at some people he hates.
Packing that much into a short phrase is called good polemic writing, people.
KMVY averages 141 operations per day, so the JFK, Jr. crash in 1999 has been followed by approximately 500,000 less eventful takeoffs and landings.
-- Philip
I mean, putting in the same bag Benin, China and Germany? did anybody loose his mind?