The first thing that crossed my mind when I heard about the crash of Asiana Airlines Flight 214 was to pray that I did not know anyone who was on board. Shanghai to Seoul to San Francisco is a flight path I have taken myself and so have many friends and colleagues.
After ascertaining that no one in my circle was on the ill-fated plane, I prayed that all the passengers who were on board were safe. With news sites and social media feeds that refresh within the space of minutes, the world quickly found out that two were dead and scores were injured.
And then it was another waiting game to find out the nationalities and identities of the two who were seated in the area of the plane that broke off on impact with the seawall in San Francisco.
I was particularly concerned because that day, I was making airline reservations for Molly, who in a few short weeks will be flying to Paris for junior year abroad. Conventional wisdom holds that the back of the plane is usually the safest. In this case, it was the most dangerous. I thought about this as I uneasily selected a seat in the exact middle of the aircraft for my daughter’s transatlantic flight.
It takes a great leap of faith any time you send your child far away into the supervision of unknown people in unfamiliar places. It is terrifying when the news confirms the reality that bad things do happen to good people, in this case, two sweet teenagers headed off to California for the trip of a lifetime.
China’s government-enforced birth control policy means that most Chinese families today have only one child to treasure. The death of any child cannot be minimized, but in a culture that has expectations that offspring will take care of parents in their old age, the impact on the two Chinese families who lost their daughters so suddenly and horrifically is particularly poignant.
In this age of instant communication, there are going to be missteps and terrible things said publicly by idiots who have a platform. That’s why a popular Korean talk show host is in trouble for stating that it was a relief that the two victims were not Korean; a Korean pop star was lambasted for complaining that breaking news coverage cut into her show time. Both have apologized, but certain situations can bring out the worst in human behavior.
There are other random, fairly trivial thoughts that crossed my mind this week; that the head of Asiana Airlines happens to have the same first name as my father — Young Doo — a name I have not heard any time in my life except in the context of my own family. That both pilots in the cockpit that day happen to have the same last name — Lee — which should not be too surprising, since it is a surname that is more common than the name Smith in the United States or Nguyen in Vietnam.
And then, at times like this, certain things that I believe are rambling around only in my head come as a surprise when they emerge as news stories.
I think about how we place so much blind faith in the people in the cockpit when we step on board an airplane. How we always see the flight attendants but rarely see the pilots. There are drug tests and safety training and other procedures in place to guarantee the flying public’s safety, but when you think about it, you never really know who you are trusting to fly you and your loved ones thousands of feet in the air at hundreds of miles per hour inside a glorified metal can.
And now, the focus of the investigation is turning even more intensely to the possibility of pilot error. That perhaps Korean culture, that is based on the authority of hierarchy, may have resulted in the pilots’ inability or unwillingness to talk to each other or to question the other’s actions. In fact, the Los Angeles Times is reporting that an early examination of the cockpit voice recordings indicates that the pilots knew they were in trouble but did not discuss it.
Malcolm Gladwell discussed the issue of Korean authoritarianism in the workplace and specifically as it related to Korean pilots in the context of a series of horrific crashes, in his fabulous book, “Outliers: the Story of Success.” The Korean aviation industry instituted an intense course of pilot cultural training to overcome these shortcomings.
It is still less than a week since the Asiana crash and too early to speculate about anything that happened or did not happen in the cockpit that day. But you can bet investigators will be looking at culture, training, and behavior that might have resulted in less-than-ideal communication between pilots when seconds meant the difference between life and death.
I imagine the life of a pilot to be composed of huge stretches of routine and even boredom, punctuated by intervals of sheer adrenaline and sometimes terror. In a culture that connects failure with shame, I cannot imagine the hearts of the four pilots who are now under such intense censure from their own nation and scrutiny from the rest of the world.
Despite the deaths and injuries, we can be grateful that there were so many survivors, thanks to improvements in airline safety, including evacuation procedures and materials used in the construction of airplanes. That is one measure of comfort in this season of travel as we step on board a plane or wave goodbye to our loved ones at the gate. I may not go to church, but I do my most intense praying inside airplanes, especially on takeoff and landing. That will be even more the case from this point forward.
