Just a few hours after I put up my last post, Fear is just a feeling, about how harnessing your fear can make you perform better, I was reading Jonah Lehrer’s fascinating book, How We Decide, and came across a story of United Airlines Flight 232.
The middle engine of the DC-10, mounted on the tail, had exploded and the shrapnel had cut all of the hydraulic lines. This was considered to be such a rare and unforeseeable event that there were no procedures for it in the pilot’s manual. There was no way to fly the plane without hydraulics, as they controlled all of the flight control surfaces on the plane. The flight, and everyone on it, was doomed.
With his plane out of control, and threatening to go into a death spiral, the pilot, Captain Al Haynes, didn’t panic. He knew that they were in an impossible situation, something his training had never prepared him for, but even under tremendous pressure, he had the presence of mind to review his limited options.
The only controls on the plane that were working were the thrust levers that adjusted the power to the two remaining engines. He quickly devised a plan to regain a measure of control over the plane just by manipulating the engine thrust. Over the course of the next forty minutes, he not only kept the plane in the air, he also devised completely novel procedures, on the fly, for steering the plane and adjusting its altitude. By doing so, he was able to direct the plane to a nearby airport and crash land it.
The plane broke apart on impact and 112 passengers died, but another 184 survived solely because of the pilot’s brilliant maneuvers.
The conditions he faced were later programmed into a flight simulator, and several very experienced pilots, the best the airline had to offer, tried to replicate Captain Haynes incredible flying, but in 57 attempts, none of them was even able to get the plane back to the airport and onto the runway. Captain Haynes is clearly an excellent pilot, but is he a genius? Well he answered that question himself.
“I’m no genius,” he said later in an interview, “but a crisis like that sure can sharpen the mind.”
I believe he made my point better than I can.
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