Tag Archives: Work

Taut Strings

Posted on by

I wrote The Decline and Fall of Air Arcadia because I was falling off a cliff. One day I was Captain and Training Captain on the A320. The next day I was a former captain, my skills and experience worth nothing, my work gone because I was sixty years old. I needed new work.

Also, to be honest, I needed some reflection and cleansing. The world changes during a forty-year career and the worker falls behind, storing seeds of bitterness. It would not do to let those seeds grow and take me to my grave. So I wrote, exhuming and examining the seeds, remembering and discovering.

It was a long process. For a start, I had to learn a new trade. Learning to write is every bit as difficult and complex and involving as learning to fly. Like flying, writing is a learn by doing trade. There is no substitute for experience. It is also, like flying, an apprenticeship trade – except that the apprenticeship is reading others, finding writing that speaks to you and asking why. Then you return to what you have written and are – well, disappointed. So the cycle begins again.

Discouraging, yes. But the effort and the pattern of my learning began to recall the intensity of flying the DC-9 as a young man. The intensity and the joy of it. And gradually what started as a rant became a love story, an eulogy.

The main character of The Decline and Fall of Air Arcadia is the airline herself. This is an excerpt from the Prologue, a brief first-person section where I speak of her:

I owed her my work and I gave her that and she took care of me and my family but there is more: there is a balance due. She and her people taught me my trade. She trusted me with a small piece of her operation and with passing on what she gave me to the next generation. And I know now, today, this afternoon, dead tired from working again, that this is a love story. She was kin. She was my work family. I took from her and in a small way I gave back. I belonged.

She is old now, as am I. I hope that she will live to see me out. It's just that there is the matter of her eulogy. I know when the moment comes the media will dig into their records and produce a sturdy and factual obituary. I know there will have been many other writings about her. But I love her and I love my work and I know that it will never be again. Not quite like this. I'd like you to know something about it. I owe her that.

The book is a novel, a fictional memoir, a fanciful snippet of Canadian history, and a love story about work. It is also perhaps a roman-à-clef – but not just about an airline. If there are keys here they fit many locks.

 

There has been a satisfying circularity to the book's gestation. A few years back I had the idea that if I could finish the book and get it into a state fit for publication, I could promote it by flying much of Arcadia's route structure in a light aircraft, albeit a sturdy one equipped for flying under Instrument Flight Rules in our demanding Canadian airspace. In my dream I chose the Beechcraft Bonanza, one of my old flames from forty years ago. She would be named Soul of Arcadia and she would fly, phoenix-like, over the routes I remember so well, defying the Faustian bargains forced upon her namesake in the twenty-first century.

Except that six years and counting from my last flight, my ratings had all expired. So I began studying again for aviation exams, starting with the Student Pilot Written Test, known as the PSTAR. Next was the Instrument Rating Written Test, the INRAT. By a stroke of fortune executives at Pepsi had invented the RedBird simulator and Transport Canada had approved its use for Instrument Rating renewals. Finally, a year or so ago, my Airline Transport Pilot License was current.

Then to my surprise I was working again. I had been offered the chance to teach instrument flying part-time. As I recount in the Prologue, I knew driving home one day that the circle had closed, that it all made sense.

Yesterday a friend I have known all my life (we met in kindergarten) brought me a book to read: George Lothian's Flight Deck: Memoirs of an Airline Pilot. (McGraw-Hill Ryerson Ltd. 1979). George retired from the airline while I was flying a Bonanza more than forty years ago. He was writing his book while I was a young man in my apprenticeship. He lived the era I only heard stories about. He writes of the making of this trade I am still so passionate about. Our books are different but our stories are complementary.

The Decline and Fall of Air Arcadia picks up the baton from Flight Deck. It is 1973 and instrument flying and airline Standard Operating Procedures have matured. The big jets have just arrived, bringing with them an upheaval in aerodynamics and pilots' assumptions. Arcadia is an adult.

It ends in the aughts, after 9/11, when the pilots who joined when I did were reaching sixty. Arcadia is an old lady. She is suffering as the old suffer when their dignity is stripped away.

With luck I will yet fly that coast-to-coast trip in Soul of Arcadia, celebrating her, singing of her exploits to our vast, proud country.

 
I have spent the last twenty-four hours in the company of my opposites, troche reading about good people whose point of view is at odds with my own. It has been enlightening and sometimes frightening to find that there are areas where we agree.

Peter Thiel (No Death, No Taxes) is rich, libertarian, Christian, and gay. While each of these epithets suggest ideology, the combination does not. Who is he?

Kate Bolick (Single for Life?) is nearly forty and unmarried. She thinks she might stay that way, whether or not she has children. Why?

Elizabeth Badinter (Against Nature) is rich, privileged, intellectual, and French. She thinks motherhood is overrated, but she is a doting grandmother.

I think Ayn Rand is selfish, elitist, and flat-out wrong. (Even boring). I am a doting father and grandfather still married to my first wife and grateful to be a member of a surviving family. Nevertheless I am aware that more women are postponing kids until they are beyond childbearing age, and that disproportionally men are dropping out of education, losing their jobs, and generally disengaging themselves from the system.

Where is the meaning here?

Buddhist philosophy speaks of the journey. Perhaps the takeaway here is that the meaning is in the tension, the taut string that keeps motherhood and womanhood from flying apart.

Perhaps, too, men are disengaging because we are adventurers, and humanity is on the threshold of a new age of discovery. In our case the taut string prevents individual invention and leadership from being submerged in practicality and the essential collective interest.

Taut strings make music. Whether we serve as tuning pegs, nuts, or bridges, we are all essential if the songs are to reach the sounding board.

The French in Denial

Posted on by

It could happen to anyone. This time it happened to be a French airplane with French pilots flying for a French airline.

For two years the “black boxes” (the voice recorder and the DFDR) lay in peace on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, 13, 000 feet below the waves. For two years there was conjecture, speculation, and (some quite fine) attempts at reconstruction. Then the black boxes surfaced, along with other hard evidence, including the jackscrew from the Trimmable Horizontal Stabilizer.

For months as the Bureau d'Enquêtes et d'Analyses slowly released information, we (and the BEA) put together the tragic and terrifying story. But the story stopped abruptly, the last chapter removed or never written.

Now a French aviation writer, Jean-Pierre Otelli, has published that last chapter independently of Air France, Airbus Industrie, and The BEA. The story ends as we knew it would – badly and sadly – but now we have more grisly detail and less room for denial.

The Bureau d'Enquêtes et d'Analyses is incensed. In a press release on October 13, 2011, (look under News in the sidebar) they claim that the transcription released by Otelli “mentions personal conversations between the crew members that have no bearing on the event, which shows a lack of respect for the memory of the late crew members” (my emphasis). The same day the London Telegraph published an account of the final minutes. The account seems to have been shortened since October 13, and I have been unable to find the original. Those who are interested may add the following after “According to an official report released earlier this year, the last words were from Captain Dubois who said: 'Ten degrees pitch.'”:

But in his new book Mr Otelli asks who will be held responsible 'for this mess'. 'Is it a training problem, fatigue, lack of sleep, or is it due to the fact the pilots are confident that an Airbus can make up for all errors?,' he writes. France's air accident investigation unit, the BEA, reacted angrily to the publication of the book, with a spokesman saying printing the conversation showed a 'lack of respect to the memory of the crew who died'. Air France has denied that its pilots were incompetent, but has since improved training, concentrating on how to fly a plane manually when there is a stall. Both Air France and Airbus are facing manslaughter charges, with a judicial investigation led by Paris judges already under way. A judge has already ordered Air France to pay some £120,000 in compensation to the families of each victim, but this is just a provisional figure which is likely to multiply many times over. THE FINAL MOMENTS Marc Dubois (captain): 'Get your wings horizontal.' David Robert (pilot): 'Level your wings. 'Pierre-Cedric Bonin (pilot): 'That's what I'm trying to do... What the... how is it we are going down like this?'Robert: 'See what you can do with the commands up there, the primaries and so on…Climb climb, climb, climb. 'Bonin: 'But I have been pulling back on the stick all the way for a while. 'Dubois: 'No,no, no, don't climb. 'Robert: 'Ok give me control, give me control.'Dubois: 'Watch out you are pulling up. 'Robert: 'Am I?'Bonin: 'Well you should, we are at 4,000.'As they approach the water, the on-board computer is heard to announce: 'Sink rate. Pull up, pull up, pull up. 'To which Captain Dubois reacts with the words: 'Go on: pull.'Bonin: 'We're pulling, pulling, pulling, pulling.'The crew never discuss the possibility that they are about to crash, instead concentrating on trying to right the plane throughout the final four minutes. Dubois: 'Ten degrees pitch. 'Robert: 'Go back up!…Go back up!…Go back up!… Go back up! 'Bonin: 'But I’ve been going down at maximum level for a while.'Dubois: 'No, No, No!… Don’t go up !… No, No! 'Bonin: 'Go down, then!'Robert: 'Damn it! We’re going to crash. It can’t be true!'Bonin: 'But what’s happening?!'The recording stops.

What we know, briefly, is this: Air France 447 ventured into a line of thunderstorms along the InterTropical Convergence Zone. Four other flights diverted around the storms. In the zone the flight encountered unusually warm temperatures and supercooled water droplets – enough to briefly overwhelm the heaters in all three pitot tubes, denying airspeed information to the Flight Control Computers for long enough to cause them to kick off the autopilot and to degrade the flight controls from Normal Law to Roll Direct/Pitch Alternate Law. Despite the fact that by the book they were too heavy to climb, the pilot flying (First Officer David Robert) zoomed up from 35,000 feet to almost 38,000 feet, dissipating the aircraft's energy and exposing it to coffin corner, where Mach buffet meets stalling speed. With brief lapses he held back pressure on the sidestick for the remainder of the flight.

First the airplane stalled (quit flying because the Angle of Attack was too great). Then, because of the steady back pressure on the sidestick, the autotrim wound the Trimmable Horizontal Stabilizer (more powerful than the elevators) to full nose up. (The THS jackscrew was found in this full nose up condition). By now the aircraft was in a deep stall, falling almost straight down in a near-level attitude.

There is plenty of room for argument about why it happened this way. Many (including David Learmount at Flight Global and myself) have started that discussion. It must continue, because we must know not only why F/O Robert stalled the aircraft, but much more importantly why he didn't know he had stalled it, why he had a totally inaccurate picture of what was happening, and why there was a complete absence of situational awareness on that Flight Deck.

It may look as if I am placing blame solely on F/O Robert. Absolutely not. That would be much too easy. I and others have already written many pages (see AF447 on my blog) trying to piece together all the factors at work in this accident. We will write many more.

As in all accidents, there is a chain of events and decisions which gradually (at first!) reduce maneuvering room. The first of these was Captain Dubois' decision to take crew rest approaching the ITCZ.

But before that came Air France's decision to carry less fuel than the spirit of the regulations requires, by filing the Flight Plan as Rio to Bordeaux, alternate Paris. Even earlier, the brilliant (I am not being ironic or facetious, I admire the man) Bernard Ziegler designed the Airbus to be “pilot-proof” and impossible to stall. However he (or his designers) also left the autotrim functional in Pitch Alternate Law, an oversight I believe should be corrected ASAP. Finally, (and earliest of all) you and I and everyone else who has traveled since Airline Deregulation in 1978 believes or wants to believe in cheap seats.

It could happen to anyone.

Sadly, it has all been foreseen. Recently I read an article which bluntly calls out the forces that led to this accident. It is called The Training Paradox, and was written by pilot, engineer, and lawyer Mark. H. Goodrich. Some of the accidents and incidents he describes stood my hair on end. Unfortunately I cannot provide a link to it. I read it in Position Report, November 2011, Volume VIII Number 3. (This is the magazine of the Retired Airline Pilots of Canada).

The very experienced and knowledgeable Mr. Goodrich shows how the forces of deregulation have derailed traditional career paths and interrupted the passing along of knowledge. As a result, the craft, the trade, the profession if you will of flying is dying a slow death. Neither are regulatory bodies or airline management immune from this decay.

This time it was the French. It is not surprising they are in denial. But it could happen to anyone, and it will.

 

Honour and the Economy

Posted on by

Employers cherry-pick from life’s prime time because our market economy has dropped the old and the young, relegating them to the status of mothers and fathers and homemakers.

Imagine the curve of a moon, half-hidden below the horizon. On the left we rise as newborns, climbing the moon's rim, finding our gifts, the ones we are meant to leave behind. Presently the lucky will join the economy, feeding their families and keeping a roof over their heads.

But the luckiest among them are tempted to stop time. Sacrificing their connection to society and their honour, they cling to the moon's apex, cheating death. There is nothing new under the sun. In the eighth century B.C. Homer writes of Agamemnon that “. . . surely in ruinous heart he makes sacrifice and has not wit enough to look behind and before him . . .” Iliad 1. 342-3.

Because the moon is in the West. Their honour gone, the greedy sit astride a setting economy. True - the old, the young, and the less fortunate sink first, but as is increasingly evident today worldwide, the luckiest, the craftiest, and those operating on the edge of legality will not be spared. All will drown in the Pacific, off the coast of California.

“And though the last lights off the black West went

Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs – ”

Gerard Manley Hopkins: God's Grandeur

How can we make our economy rise as the sun in the East?

Imagine the curve once again. Imagine a curve that includes us all. The economy is not about the money, stupid. Money is a means of exchange, not a system. And an economy that shuts out the majority of its citizens cannot survive. The economy, our collective welfare, depends on the inclusion of our honourable work. All of our honourable work.

Imagine the weak among us, the old and the young, clinging to the curves of the heavenly orb as they near the horizon. The young have much to learn and no one to teach them. The old have come to expect a secure retirement and employers are balking. The solution is in front of us, but we are not looking.

Rather than expel these outliers from the economy because the numbers don't add up, include them. True, the old cannot work fourteen-hour days, and the young must spend more time learning than earning. But neither has to feed a family. They have to live, but in the Navajo creed it is dishonourable to desire more than you need. It is, as their elders would say, the spoiling of holy things.

Teachers and learners are vital to society, to our economy.

So let us include them, and everyone, recognizing that the strength of an economy, of a society, is in the collective gift of its peoples. We can work, now, to seventy-five and beyond in many cases, our health improved by the engagement. Older people have a perspective potentially invaluable to the young, and can do much in helping the latter realize their gifts. All we need, as outliers on both ends of the curve of life, is self-respect and a living wage. The return on investment will be beyond the wildest dreams of venture capitalists.

Let us stop dishonouring ourselves by cherry-picking. Instead let us honour ourselves and each other, fitting together as the ancients, the poets, and the native elders have taught.

What We Lose by Winning

Posted on by

We teach our kids to be competitive. Since we want the best for them, we put them into the best preschool we can afford, hoping to get the edge for admission into the best kindergarten. And so it goes, all the way through to university and graduate school. Sometimes it is not so much the education itself but the cachet of having the right degree that we are aiming for. For that will determine whom our child knows and what doors are open to him. Ultimately, we believe, it will determine how much money he makes.
Ours is a competitive society. We believe in hard work, pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps, personal responsibility. We believe in sports and team play. We believe we live in a meritocracy and that all this competitive striving will bring rewards. The purpose of this article is not to dispute any of this; rather it is to put it in perspective, particularly the perspective of an older person.
I am on the far side of the arc of life. I have grown up, been educated, played a part in raising a family, and retired from a job I loved. So I look at life not as future possibility or as the hectic present of job and growing family. Instead I strive to remain relevant.
Indeed, virtue is in the striving. Sports teach us to try harder and to play as a team. University teaches us to hone a critical intelligence. But what is the goal we are striving for? Winning the game? Landing the job after college?
There is only one thing wrong with these goals: they might be reached. If they have not been thought of from the start as sub-goals, stepping stones to a higher end, goals like winning the game can take on a corrosive power.
At the moment of success there is a well-earned feeling of exuberance. Like many pleasures, however, the feeling quickly fades. Too often what we learn from this experience is that we have to go on winning if we are to continue feeling good. Gradually our self-worth creeps into the equation: we are no good unless we keep winning.
The parallels to addictions of all kinds should serve as a warning. Drugs, gambling, sex, and countless other cravings have the same short arc of pleasure, the same compulsive return to the trough, the same sapping of the spirit. What, then?
There is an old Arab proverb which, robbed of its poetry, says roughly: If you strive towards a noble goal, do not be content with less than the stars/ For the life's blood you spend (on a lesser goal) will be the same life's blood you spend climbing reaching for the stars.
If what we do is to have meaning, we must work for a purpose larger than ourselves. The work begins in elementary school and before, where we learn that we are not the center of the universe and that we must respect the dignity of others. Later we learn that as a team we can achieve more. In these endeavors there is always a currency. We play as a team to win games. We work as a team to make money. Our progress toward (or away from) the regional championship or the Fortune 500 is measured by games won or by net worth.
Where we can go astray is in becoming distracted by the currency. Winning games or making money become goals in themselves. We forfeit our honor and sometimes our soul.
The legend of Arthur bears heavily on this issue. He becomes King not because of superior prowess as a knight but because he is the only one who can pull the sword from the stone. He is born of a loveless union and dies at the hand of his son, born of another loveless and deceitful union with his half-sister. He is betrayed in his own love by his best friend and most trusted knight.
But Arthur understands that it is his destiny to lead. He comes to understand that he will suffer and not know many of the comforts of being human. The Holy Grail he seeks is, in the end, nothing more or less than being true to his work.
There, in essence, is the challenge that faces us. Will we know, at the hour of our death, that we have done the best we can with the gifts we have been given? That we have been true to our work?
The temptations will always be with us. To seek pleasure and avoid pain. To win at any cost. To believe, because we are in a meritocracy and we have made money, that we are better than our fellows.
But in the end nobody is fooled, not even ourselves. Our goal cannot be simply the best outcome for me. We must aim higher than that. We must not fail to give back to humanity the unique and precious gift that each of us has been given.
Is there a social, political, or economic system which makes this more likely? Probably not. But as individuals we can set ourselves noble goals and live a life of honor.

Your Roof is Gonna Leak . . .

Posted on by

Tradespeople

I am a pilot. I am lucky to have retired without incident from a career at an airline. Flying is still in my bones.

Mine is an apprenticeship trade. You can’t learn it in a classroom or by reading a book, although both help. You have to get your hands on an airplane.

Most trades are like mine. It takes constant study to stay current in the field. The reference books, software, and reams of data relevant to the job are huge and growing. But the essential learning, the learning that serves as backbone and basis for all the stuff in the reference books, is hands-on experience taught by a mentor and teacher. In turn you should pass this knowledge on to the next generation.

Tradespeople are no better and no worse than others. The majority of them like going to work and doing the the best job they can. There is satisfaction in building something or in accomplishing a mission. You can look back and say, I built that, or I did that.

But like rule of law or paying taxes, plying a trade with skill and devotion is a social contract. Protect me from lawbreakers, ensure others pay their fair share. Give me a living wage so I can support a family, and respect my work for what it is.

Nor are we tradespeople to be divided from business people, put in a separate category. On the contrary most small businesses are founded and powered by tradespeople, be they plumbers, machinists or software engineers with ideas. Entrepreneurship and the trades are interdependent and have been since the days of the guilds. Perhaps what we are less compatible with is management.

Hubris

I was lucky also to have spent most of a decade flying and teaching on Airbus aircraft. The design of the A320 is revolutionary, extraordinary, and even beautiful. She never failed to delight me (like mariners, I thought of my ship as a person, a female) and she remains one of the loves of my life.

But she is not perfect. Call it my fallacy of anthropomorphism if you will, but I believe that a man-made object cannot be more perfect that the sum of its creators. It can be outstanding, it can be beautiful, but it cannot be perfect. Lovely as she is, my Airbus is no exception. She has her faults.

Her qualities have been called to review by two recent events with very different outcomes: Chesley Sullenberger's heroic handling of a ditching in the Hudson River, and the crash of an A330 in the Atlantic Ocean with the loss of all on board.

All airplanes have what is called an envelope. Fly faster than Va (maneuvering speed) and turbulence or rough handling can result in damage to the airframe. Fly slower than Vs (stall) and the wing can no longer generate enough lift to hold the airplane up. Fly faster than Vd (dive speed) and all manner of bad things can happen, from Mach tuck to control flutter to loss of control. The technicalities of the flight envelope can fill a book and have, many times over. The parameters include aircraft weight, air density (altitude, temperature) and G loading. But the bottom line is that it is the pilot's responsibility to keep the airplane in the envelope, to fly it as it was designed to be flown.

Bernard Ziegler had a different idea.

He was my love's Daddy. You see him in her everywhere you look. She is beautiful, intelligent, accomplished, and refined. She is uncompromising. She is very French.

She has an envelope like any other airplane. She flies with the same aerodynamics as they do. But her Daddy added a new feature to her design: envelope protection.

With the A320 and subsequent models, the pilot cannot “push the envelope”. He can push or pull as much as he wants and she will go to the edge, but not over the cliff. She is impossible to stall.

As long as she is in NORMAL LAW.

Her fly-by-wire control system is impressive in the extreme. There have been no known failures in service. But like us she depends on sensors, eyes and ears. And of course electricity to power her hundreds of computers. Starve her, blind her, or deafen her and you are asking for trouble. Chesley Sullenberger understood her. His first act was to reach up and start the Auxiliary Power Unit. This one strategic move kept power on the aircraft busses as Jeffrey Skiles, the First Officer, went through the engine restart drills. This one strategic move kept her in Normal Law until touchdown.

AF447 was approaching the Intertropical Convergence Zone, the ITCZ, the doldrums. It was night and as usual there was a long line of thunderstorms in the Zone, crossing their track obliquely. The Captain had just left the Flight Deck for his planned rest. The most junior pilot – the relief pilot – was in the left seat flying the aircraft.

Ahead of them a small storm was showing on the radar. Despite its size it was dense enough to reflect all of the energy from their radar. The result – a well-documented phenomenon called attenuation or blanking – was that a gap appeared in the line behind the small storm. AF447 flew around the corner and suddenly the gap was gone. They were plowing into the main line of thunderstorms.

Supercooled water is unusual at FL350 but not unusual in thunderstorms. Drops of supercooled water freeze instantly when disturbed – as for example by a fast-moving aircraft. The temperature that night was an unusually warm minus 40 C., just warm enough to keep the drops from freezing and cold enough so the heating elements in the A330's pitot probes were not powerful enough to keep the probes open. All three pitots were temporarily blocked, cutting off all airspeed information.

She was blind and deaf. Panicked, she shut down her envelope protection and called out to her pilots for help, shutting down the autopilot and autothrust and reverting to Pitch Alternate Roll Direct Law. Visual and aural warnings cascaded across the ECAM and into the speakers. Beautifully designed and prioritized for foreseeable failures, the warnings that night became a powerful distraction, demanding the pilots' attention at just the moment they needed to ignore her.

She was squealing like a stuck pig. If the pilots could have read her right that night, what they would have heard was, I'm gone, guys. I'm outta here. You have control.

Blind, deaf, and still squealing, the A330 handed control to the relief pilot. He pulled back on the sidestick. She zoomed upwards, climbing to FL380 at 7000 feet per minute, rapidly losing energy, her angle of attack increasing toward the stall. In Pitch Alternate Roll Direct Law the pilot's back pressure on the sidestick was also moving the powerful Trimmable Horizontal Stabilizer, moving it slowly to full nose-up, effectively locking them into the stall that would follow momentarily.

Today David Learmount of Flight Global posted a blog titled Being an airline pilot is “A profession in decline”. Is it really? He quotes from William Langewiesche's book Fly by Wire, citing Langewiesche's admiration for Bernard Ziegler and the Airbus and his ambivalent attitude toward airline pilots. I will add another quote from the book:

“What did Ziegler want? He wanted to build an airplane that could not be stalled – not once, not ever – by any pilot at the controls.”

She fell flat, nose and wings level with the horizon, falling not flying, her angle of attack near ninety degrees, her rate of descent 10,000 feet per minute. Four minutes later she hit the water.

Nemesis and Lesson

Here is another quote from Fly by Wire:

“If you design airplanes for (airline pilots) to fly, you must grapple with not only with the existence of a few who are incompetent from the start, but also with the fact that plenty of once-excellent pilots grow unsafe with time. They become arrogant, bored, or complacent. They drink, they fade, they erode.”

Bernard Ziegler is (was) a brilliant test pilot and engineer. (Like me, he is getting older.) He knew that he was on the far right flare of the bell curve. He knew (as do we all) some examples from the left rim of the bell.

I am from somewhere in the middle of the curve. I was lucky, worked hard to maintain my competence, and survived my job. I don't dispute the factuality of the above quote. But I would add a caution:

Underestimate a tradesperson at your own risk.

Chesley Sullenberger knew his airplane, respected her and treated her like an equal. He expected Jeffrey Skiles to act professionally and he did. He was proud of his profession, his trade. That was his true achievement. The successful ditching followed from it, a corollary.

David P. Davies gets it right-way-around in his classic Handling the Big Jets:

“Airline flying is just money for old rope most of the time . . .”

He recognizes, as pilots say, that flying is hours of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror.

But he also points out the need for training of the highest quality. That designing an airplane that is capable of landing safely with half its engines failed is of no use if you haven't trained the pilots to do the maneuver. If you haven't given them the confidence that they can.

So pilots: know your airplane. Treat her and your fellow-pilots well. Expect the best from them.

And to everyone, especially homeowners: respect tradespeople. Search out those who are proud of their work. Especially if you're looking for a roofer.