11 thoughts on “Foreign Airline Safety and Malcolm Gladwell”

  1. I haven’t read this book, but I find it ironic that one chapter assigns ‘foreigness’ to the cause of failure, whereas the rest of the book is all about how, to be really good at something, you need to work really hard. I guess he’s
    just covering all his bases, and/or in his vast experience flying is that much different from any other pursuit people might undertake.

    On what to me is a related note the average aircraft carrier commander has done the following:

    a) Acrrued ~4,000 hours flight time
    b) Commanded a squardon
    c) Commanded at least one other ship, probably two
    d) Done a tour in DC to learn the game, and gotten an advanced degree

    Yet we allow a man whose only previous experience was as a ‘community organizer’ to be President. Oh wait, I forgot about his being a state Senator for a year.

    The ‘American Idol’ presidency and the hailing of Gladwell’s genius both point
    to a sad decline of standards. Or the fact marketing is ever improving. Either way, we’ve gotten what we deserved.

    Phil, one quibble I have is that I thought most major airline pilots were ex-military, not from the regionals. Or if they were, they were ex-military folks who went regional first because they didn’t have the correct type of time (were helo guys). I can say, from experience, that military flight training is
    superb.

  2. It’s been a while since I read that book, but the take away for me was the “10,000 hour rule”. Gladwell deserves some credit for pointing out that most of the subjects on Outliers, such as Bill Gates and the Beatles, owe a great deal of their success to the fact that they simply acquired a staggering amount of experience at a comparatively early age thus giving them a competitive advantage over their contemporaries. The 10,000 hour rule precisely supports your assertion in your article that American pilots have more, and better quality experience. Too bad Gladwell didn’t consistently apply the theory.

  3. Wally: If you look at the number of airliners flying every day and the number of military planes it quickly becomes clear that there aren’t enough military veterans to go around. Worldwide, there are more than 6000 Boeing 737s up in the skies right now and more than 6000 Airbus A320-series airplanes on order. 145 F22 Raptors have been built, and about 2500 JSFs will be ordered. The fighter jet might fly an hour a day; the airliner flies 12 or 16 hours per day, every day of the year, which means that more pilots are required per aircraft. A person who has been flying jets for 20 years in the military and is retired with a comfortable pension may not want to spend the next 20 years living in hotels. The military veteran with extensive multi-engine turbine PIC time can skip the regional airline step, but does not skip the slow climb in seniority at a major airline. He or she will start as a first officer, on reserve, at perhaps $60,000 per year.

    People become military pilots these days because they want to be military pilots. If someone wanted to be a major airline pilot, at least before the Collapse of 2008, he or she would get there much faster by going to work as a regional airline pilot (and much as we might complain about an overnight in Iowa, it is better than a year in Iraq).

  4. I agree 100% with your article, but I also agree with Gladwell about the adverse effect of Korean culture on flight safety.

    I base this opinion on my experience in the USAF, where I served for a year on a Korean Air Force installation. I personally observed several very serious flight safety violations caused by the almost total unwillingness of subordinates to contradict a senior officer even slightly.

    The Koreans know this is a problem and I know they are working hard to modernize their cockpit culture, but they are decades behind the west. And the really scary thing is that I suspect they are decades ahead of some of the other Asian nations in this respect.

  6. It would be more convincing if there were no statistically significant difference in safety records between foreign/US major/US regional pilots with similar levels of pilot-in-command experience.

    I would expect Gladwell should have at least corrected for experience. Not doing so would be bordering on negligent for an “expert”. I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t correct for a specific aspect of experience – as a non-pilot I wouldn’t have thought of this. Not that that makes it excusable for not checking with experts.

  7. Hmmmm, I haven’t got the book with me but I don’t recall that Gladwell said anything about the US and Canda having the safest airlines? Maybe he did. I do recall he concluded that the pilots with the least “respect for authority” were the Kiwis, followed by the Aussies, which more or less squares with my expectations 🙂 And it may also contribute to the stellar safety record of Air New Zealand and Qantas. I do agree that the pilot’s experience as PIC is just as likely to contribute to airline safety as the uppityness of the co-pilot, or anything else for that matter.

  8. Steve: Gladwell made no mention of pilot experience.

    Seth: Gladwell compared particular foreign airlines to U.S. major airlines in the aggregate. He did not explicitly say that North American carriers were the safest, but he used them as a reference standard for excellence. As far as Australia/NZ go, they have had many of the same advantages as the U.S. There are a lot of flight schools and private or general aviation pilots in those countries. The countries have had a lot of military-trained pilots relative to their airline needs. The countries are constantly exporting surplus pilots (a lot of airlines based in Arab countries rely heavily on pilots from Commonwealth countries) rather than trying to find 23-year-olds to train ab initio.

  10. Words reversed in the second line under “About Malcom Gladwell”?
    “had he” vs. “he had”? (Suggest this be deleted from any posting)

    Based on military flying, CFI ratings, 40 years of private flying – but no airline experience at all – and ten years in Italy where I knew some very competent airline and sport pilots, I agree that it’s experience levels and not culture.

  11. I had an assignment while a USAF instructor to teach foreign students. I can say from that experience: it could very well be the culture. I tried to teach asian pilots to fly jets who’d never driven a car or had control of a big machine. It wasn’t pretty.

    I was an airline pilot for 30 years. I can say from that experience that it’s both the experience of the captain and the teamwork possible in the cockpit of an airliner from a culture that allows the F/O to contribute to the mission. Any western/industrial country falls into this category. Europe, North America, Japan, even parts (not all) of South America and Asia.

    Having seen excellent F/Os become excellent captains that had all F/O military experience I can say that a lack of PIC or CFI experience is easily overcome by enough right seat time to learn from an expert.

    But either a culture so class driven that creates a “one opinion” cockpit or one that relies on pilots from a culture unfamiliar with being in control of a machine has problems finding enough safe captains to build an airline on. These issues are not easily solved. A lack of PIC or CFI experience, on the other hand, easily solved through right seat experience.

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