drill, baby, drill

Consequences in our faces

The horrifying footage of the JAL flight hitting a Japanese Coast Guard aircraft on Monday evening at Haneda Airport reminds us that disciplined and orderly reaction to an imminent danger substantiates the conversation we have had for the first two days of 2024 on Actions Create Consequences. The repeated practice the JAL crew had under their belt provided them the sequence and automatic mechanism to evacuate 379 people, including eight infants, from a burning airliner within four minutes. That practice, as our reader pointed out yesterday in advocating for slaying that ‘devil in the details’, saved peoples lives in what could have been an absolutely disastrous event.

I was in an exit row on a flight across the Pacific when a flight attendant asked a passenger to pick up the newspapers he had discarded as if confetti. He harrumped at her that he was paying for his seat so he was free to leave newspapers anywhere he wanted. This was even before ‘freedom’ became so central to our answers to everything in America.

To his amazement, she swung around saying ‘I once had to evacuate an airplane, sir. Any additional steps could have cost us our lives. Sliding on your newspapers would have added steps to the tight process we already confronted. Pick up the papers, please.’ which he did.

She had been through the drills—and the real time application.

I wonder how many more passengers around the world paid heed to the safety announcements today in light of the JAL footage. Knowing how self-absorbed too many of us are, I suspect it wasn’t nearly as many as the number aware of how long ago Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce began dating (I have no idea on that but I know zilch about pop culture).

I also wonder how many folks in the United States would heed the orders to leave their carry on luggage should they flee a similar event. I saw footage from 2017 or so this morning where several passengers took time to gather their belongings before getting out of a fuselage after a crash. That not only endangered them but risked the lives of those behind them because time is so absolutely vital where jet fuel and fire may meet.

All of the practice that airline crews run are phenomenal, get to the heart of how to empty a plane but always run the risk of encountering those passengers determined the rules don’t entirely apply because their luggage matters so much more than anyone else’s. I prefer thinking that the lives of all invariably outweigh whatever is in the luggage but am convinced my view wouldn’t be universally held in a crisis.

Again, as our reader noted yesterday, repeated drills for safety or pilot training to fly planes are repeated for a reason: to assure the ability to carry out the vital sequence of steps without having to think about what the next item requires. Each report I heard yesterday about this flaming mess cited U.S. safety drills as the global ‘gold standard’ because the Federal Aviation Administration mandates that airlines cull out everything not essential to evacuating an aircraft when a bad scenario occurs. The FDA and airlines have a rigid learning protocol to assure this is truly second nature. Have you ever seen an attendant get rattled in any turbulence? It’s because airlines introduce scenarios, offer solutions to addressing the resulting problems, then repeat, repeat, drill, drill, drill, and repeat and drill some more until reactions are truly ‘all systems on auto-pilot’. Other countries emulate us because our system has integrity to establish these standards. Bureaucracy may be boring, along with drills being tedious, but the evidence is its actions work in times of utter necessity.

I doubt any of us want to confront what the passengers did on Monday evening. I will, as various aviation ‘talking heads’ have been advocating for decades, go back to paying a lot more attention to the safety discussions. I have no crossword puzzle more important than that nor a book that can’t wait for five minutes to listen to advice I don’t want to use.

But, the truth is that drills and repeated warnings saved 379 people in Japan this week. There is no mystery about how this all could have gone so wrong but, because of discipline, planning, and slaying that devil in the details, showed things can go right instead of everything falling apart to panic and hysteria.

Bully to the JAL crew and those who remind us about slaying that devil with mastering in practice what seems pedantic.

Thank you for reading Actions Create Consequences. I welcome your rebuttals, thoughts, and anecdotes. I especially thank the paid subscribers who support this work.

The days are lengthening which makes my heart sing. I see ‘elliptical man’, a guy who built himself an elliptical-driven craft on Spa Creek, awing us with his energy, pushing himself downstream as I write. Spring must be near! Uh, well, perhaps not quite yet but it’s coming. This was the dawn with various pinks to savour.

Be well and be safe. FIN