I was interviewed by WCVB, Boston’s ABC station, about a commercial airline flight on which one of the pilots died en route. Here’s the clip from October 5, 11 o’clock news. (Of course they captured about 30 minutes of tape in which I coherently explained the roles of the captain and first officer in normal operations, the crew concept of flying, the practice of trading “pilot flying” and “pilot monitoring” roles after each leg. Nearly all of that was left on the cutting room floor in favor of a passenger reviewing the remaining pilot’s performance.)
5 thoughts on “Me on TV: Diverted commercial flight after the death of one pilot”
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Philip,
• film cutting room floors are a thing of the past (and, besides, postproduction had to cut their spending, so they eliminated the immigrant bi-weekly cleaning lady in favor of occasional shooing away the floor flotsam themselves. Last I heard, she was looking for a Mass. dentist.)
• the entire raw footage of your interview will be tagged with your name/ subject/ place/ time and archived forever. Should you in the future turn up dead or alive in some news-filler-worthy context, it WILL BE dusted off & rendered. Depending on journalistic practices/ industry-wide agreements in your region, you may—or may not—be able to get a copy of that raw stock in advance for private record keeping, or to put a hold on future resale/ reuse of it even if you didn’t spec it in advance (but you better move fast, and sick a kindly written lawyer’s letter on the studio heads, not on the line producers).
• rather than complain of being pushed aside by some cheeky PAYING PASSENGERS temerity to do ad-hoc pilot’s performance review on camera, you should accept some of the blame, and learn from your mistakes by picking up a few impromptu cockpit interview techniques at, say, The Boston Center for Adult Education. But hurry up, registration closes this Tuesday, the 3rd November! It is NOT those passengers’ fault that you couldn’t deliver throat-grabbing, channel-staying-put copy.
[Partial Disclosure: written by twice video crew member of a media stonewalling for politicians training camp (official name: “Catastrophe Media Management”)]
Phil,
Why do they always interview you for these aviation stories? I know you’re experienced in a wide variety of aircraft, but you’d hardly compare to a long time airline pilot, would you? As far as experience is concerned wouldn’t the high-time airline pilot have much more wisdom?
Or do you have a friend at the TV station? 😉
(I hope the mods let this through. I think it’s a reasonable question!)
MarkD: Of course a working airline captain would have been a better source. But I think that a typical employment agreement would forbid a mainline Delta captain, for example, from talking to the press. And the TV stations operate on tight deadlines. So they use Google and their Rolodex to find subjects as best they can.
[I don’t know anyone at WCVB though it is owned by Hearst Corporation and I was involved in 1995 in setting up Hearst’s Internet infrastructure (for ecommerce, user tracking, ad serving, etc.).]
“Of course they captured about 30 minutes of tape … Nearly all of that was left on the cutting room floor…”
Haven’t you yet learned that news is about delivering “sensation”? You need to out do the “clock boy” and then, maybe, maybe then you will get the whole 30 min and the chance to meet the president [1].
back to reality. That news clip wasn’t about you, it was about the viewers (yes, the “viewers”). It is to give the viewers a sense of “fear” and “wow” element. Watch the expression on the reporters face as they report the “news”. What’s the point of showing a stationary ambulance (maybe from a different clip?) and look at the passengers they picked for the clip (I’m sure they interviewed more than 3). Everything and everyone in that clip had a “fear” and “puzzle” written over their faces, except you!!
[1] Obama will not repeat this mistake, but Hillary may.
Phil,
How about a retired airline pilot? 🙂