"We're a single engine, that's it."
April 19, 2018 10:53 AM   Subscribe

 
I’d fly with that pilot.
posted by chavenet at 11:01 AM on April 19, 2018 [5 favorites]


NOPENOPENOPENOPENOPE
posted by lunasol at 11:01 AM on April 19, 2018


wishing I had not read a description of the injuries to the deceased passenger. getting halfway sucked out of a plane (despite wearing a seatbelt) has got to be just a horrible way to go.

.
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 11:03 AM on April 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


Transcript.
posted by inconstant at 11:08 AM on April 19, 2018 [8 favorites]


Capt. Shults did an amazing job. While the one-engine scenario is an event that all pilots train for extensively, it is an entirely different thing to have it happen, particularly with the added stress of a hull breach and potential fatality. Kudos to her for guiding everyone to safety and keeping her cool where almost anyone else would freak the F out.
posted by grumpybear69 at 11:12 AM on April 19, 2018 [12 favorites]


I didn't realize the passenger died :-(

.
posted by Annika Cicada at 11:12 AM on April 19, 2018


The pilot used to land fighter jets on an aircraft carrier which is just a bad situation even when everything is "normal", so you could hardly have hoped for anyone better.
posted by selfnoise at 11:12 AM on April 19, 2018 [9 favorites]


I’d fly with that pilot.

Pretty sure I had her earlier this year. I've prob flow 100 times between SJC and LAX/SNA/BUR on SWA over the last three years so it's hard to remember exactly when, but I am 95% sure I saw her on one of my planes in January.

As far as her cool demeanor: If you read the beginning of The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe you'll learn two things about how good pilots communicate:

#1) Everyone talks on the radio with a vaguely West Virginian drawl (because of Chuck Yeager).
#2) Even while plummeting towards certain death, a good pilot will give out cool and calm observations on what is happening just in case that information can help the pilots that continue to live.
posted by sideshow at 11:13 AM on April 19, 2018 [35 favorites]


That professionalism makes me actually feel happy about flying. Cool as a freaking cucumber.
posted by jferg at 11:15 AM on April 19, 2018 [4 favorites]


This is why it pisses me off when people refer to pilots as "glorified bus drivers" or some nonsense like that. They have so much training for just this sort of situation.

It's great to hear about someone who does their job well, especially when they save lives in the process.

I read one article that at a school career day some Army jackhole asked her if she was lost when she was sitting in on the talk about flying as a career because there was no such thing as a girl pilot.
posted by bondcliff at 11:17 AM on April 19, 2018 [12 favorites]


Everyone has the same tone of voice as if they’re ordering a pizza. It makes me wonder if their training is such that they actually are as calm as a pizza order or their training is such that that’s just the voice they use even though they aren’t actually that calm.
posted by bleep at 11:20 AM on April 19, 2018 [3 favorites]


Women in charge of everything now, please.
posted by lauranesson at 11:21 AM on April 19, 2018 [46 favorites]


Man, I enjoy listening to these recordings but I don't see how / why these are always sooooooo hard to hear or distinguish, not to mention all the beeps/clicks/scratches, on the voices?

Are they clearer when it's live and the actual ATC and Pilot talking to each other? Everything before 3:40 or so in the linked audio is just.... wow, how do they transfer information at all. Not to mention that much of the rest, even when it's not an emergency, is at tobacco auctioneer speed.

I honestly feel like being able to distinguish near incomprehensible chatter must be part of the training/experience these folks get.

This pilot, cool as a cucumber, I feel better flying if other pilots are anywhere near as good as she is.
posted by RolandOfEld at 11:21 AM on April 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


Every time I've listened to cockpit comms from similar incidents they all just sound completely chill. It's incredible to me. I'd be hair-on-fire, but then again I haven't had hundreds of hours of training in keeping my head during an emergency.
posted by soren_lorensen at 11:22 AM on April 19, 2018


Yea, for sure, and I know it's protocol that keeps things that much more comprehensible but these recordings sound like a bad 911 log so often that I'd hope pilots and ATCs would have to deal with a minimum of that on a daily basis.
posted by RolandOfEld at 11:24 AM on April 19, 2018


That is some professionalism on display right there. The emergency is bad enough, but it also happened in the busiest airspace in the country and it really requires everyone in the space to be working together to land a plane like that. New York Center is full of controllers who don't take shit from anyone.

That calm by the pilots, though... On the one hand, the acute emergency has already passed by the time they're talking to Center. They're still alive, the plane is controllable, and they've run most of the checklists and have a good idea what's working and what isn't. On the other hand, imagine driving down the highway with parts flying out from the hood of your car and deciding to drive to the next rest stop to deal with it.

You can hear them donning oxygen right at the beginning of the audio - the garbled transmissions out, the missed transmissions from Center, and then the pssst... psssst as the pilots are talking. As they're setting up for 27L, they've descended below 10,000 feet and have taken the masks off.

It makes me wonder if their training is such that they actually are as calm as a pizza order or their training is such that that’s just the voice they use even though they aren’t actually that calm.

My (one and only) near-emergency in air, I was flying with my father back home in the middle of winter. We were building ice the whole flight home, I was certain we were goners, and I was talking with control the whole way trying to get out of it. My dad told me after we landed that he had no idea we were in trouble. I was seconds away from shitting myself.
posted by backseatpilot at 11:26 AM on April 19, 2018 [63 favorites]


not to mention all the beeps/clicks/scratches

A lot of that is just radio interference, but IIRC cockpit voice recorders intentionally capture all sounds from the cockpit so that incident investigators can reconstruct audible warnings, mechanical issues, etc. as confirmation for the black box data and/or a replacement for it if the black box can't be recovered.
posted by tobascodagama at 11:27 AM on April 19, 2018 [8 favorites]


I'm not sure if the audio clarity is better for the pilots, but in general they're only communicating over a fairly narrow vocabulary with lots of repetition and confirmation.

This part fucking floored me:
ATC: "Is your airplane physically on fire?"
Pilot: "No, it's not on fire, but part of it's missing... they said there's a hole and someone went out"
ATC: "Uhm, I'm sorry you said there was a hole and someone went out?"
Pilot: "Yeah"
ATC: "Doesn't matter we'll work it out"
posted by 0xFCAF at 11:27 AM on April 19, 2018 [26 favorites]


cockpit voice recorders

See, I assumed this was a recording from the tower. But, yea, radio interference is the obvious culprit but damn I would have thought commercial airliners and towers with modern radios could talk to each other and it sound clearer. I suppose that's just not the case.
posted by RolandOfEld at 11:29 AM on April 19, 2018 [2 favorites]


ATC: "Uhm, I'm sorry you said there was a hole and someone went out?"
Pilot: "Yeah"
ATC: "Doesn't matter we'll work it out"


My thought there was that the ATC was thinking ahead and wondering if they should find out where to send local officials to go look for the person that got sucked out and then said (internally and verbally) "We'll work that shit out later."
posted by RolandOfEld at 11:30 AM on April 19, 2018 [3 favorites]


Are they clearer when it's live and the actual ATC and Pilot talking to each other?

No, that's about par for the course. You get used to it. There's a jargon you learn - it's almost computer-like after a while. Control expects these words from me, I say those words and expect a certain set of words in return. I find it a lot more infuriating at non-towered airports where light GA pilots are hanging around on the channel for what feels like hours - "Yeah, you got a Cessna about... 3... no, 5 miles to the south... I think we're heading into 32. No, 14. Anyone else out there?"

See, I assumed this was a recording from the tower.

The recording is a mix of New York Center, Philly Approach, and Philadelphia Tower. The CVR audio won't be released for a while, I'm sure. CVR will contain audio for each radio, the intercom, each mic in the cockpit (two pilots and maybe an observer sit if someone's sitting there), and an ambient channel to pick up the sounds of audio alerts and unusual sounds.
posted by backseatpilot at 11:33 AM on April 19, 2018 [15 favorites]


For those who aren't great at auditory processing, here's a subtitled version of the same audio, with a radar overlay. I processed it better that way.
posted by ambrosen at 11:33 AM on April 19, 2018 [32 favorites]


I think of commercial pilots as "heroes of opportunity". I've read enough stories like this where something has gone terribly wrong and the pilot and flight crew stay calm and keep everyone they can safe that I'm convinced it's how pretty much every pilot would react in the same scenario.

Every single one of them is a hero in waiting but only a few ever have the opportunity to display it.

That said, Mrs. VTX was reading about her yesterday and told me that she was one of the first female fighter pilots and was quite good. Since women weren't allowed in combat at the time, she didn't fly combat missions. Instead, she flew enemy aircraft to train pilots.

The movie "Top Gun" was very important to me when it came out and I had planned on being a naval aviator when I grew up for a long time after. So it hit me that she had the same job as "Viper" from that movie. As in, "Holy shit VIPER is up here? Oh man, this is NOT good."

Certified badass.
posted by VTX at 11:33 AM on April 19, 2018 [27 favorites]


backseatpilot: is that ambient channel filtered out, or otherwise not present I mean, in the pilot to ATC conversation? That'd likely be a fair bit of clarity right there. Last silly question I promise.
posted by RolandOfEld at 11:35 AM on April 19, 2018


The recording is listed as Courtesy LiveATC.net, which means it's almost certainly from a radio somewhere near the airport picking up VHF air traffic control transmissions, which are then encoded and streamed to the internet. What you hear from the feeder station recording is not necessarily what the pilot(s) and ATC are hearing.
posted by zamboni at 11:38 AM on April 19, 2018 [4 favorites]


is that ambient channel filtered out, or otherwise not present I mean, in the pilot to ATC conversation?

What you're hearing in this recording is just air traffic control transmissions. Like backseatpilot says, the Cockpit Voice Recorder recordings (which has the ambient sounds as a separate track) will not be released for a while.
posted by zamboni at 11:41 AM on April 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


is that ambient channel filtered out, or otherwise not present I mean, in the pilot to ATC conversation?

What you're hearing on the recording is saved from LiveATC, which streams aircraft communication channels over the internet. Folks set up receivers at home, tune them to the appropriate frequency, and stream it to the internet. Someone recorded the appropriate segments from three different sources for this - New York Center (covers en route traffic from roughly Philadelphia to roughly Hartford, CT), Philly Approach (covers traffic inbound and outbound from PHL), and Philly Tower (any traffic inbound roughly 5 miles or so from the airport, plus departing traffic on the runway). Since the pilots are talking in to a mic in the cockpit, when the pilot is transmitting you might be able to hear alarms going off. I didn't hear any in this recording, so they've probably silenced all of them by the time they start talking.

Cockpit noises will be heard on the Cockpit Voice Recorder, which is not transmitted out. The CVR records a loop (I forget what modern ones can do... 2 hours I think?) on removable media which is stored in a reinforced enclosure (the "black box"). The NTSB will have taken it to read out the data (along with the Flight Data Recorder) and will use the ambient channel to identify what alarms were triggered and when, along with other noises (like, say, a large bang from the engine exploding). The NTSB will likely release the audio at some point in the future, usually around the conclusion of the investigation.
posted by backseatpilot at 11:43 AM on April 19, 2018 [8 favorites]


I've always had a soft spot for ATC and flight stuff in general. THat's some amazing professionalism displayed by all involved. I was listening to the tapes from the "miracle on the Hudson," yesterday, and it's similarly astonishing.
posted by Alensin at 11:44 AM on April 19, 2018


I get more worked up when somebody with a $30K annual income is buying a $500K beach house on HGTV.
posted by COD at 11:54 AM on April 19, 2018 [30 favorites]


That professionalism makes me actually feel happy about flying. Cool as a freaking cucumber.

Well, they were all counting on her.
posted by chavenet at 12:05 PM on April 19, 2018 [43 favorites]


Nevermind icewater, that woman has liquid hydrogen in her veins. She manages to exude calmness and a sense of control even while explaining that, yes, parts fell off of the airplane. The ATC dude sounds positively panic-stricken in comparison. (How often do you hear ATC stammer like that?)
posted by rmd1023 at 12:05 PM on April 19, 2018 [2 favorites]


At the risk of derailing, one of my favourite audio clips is the minutes after the Apollo 13 accident. They're in space, heading away from earth, and there's been an explosion and they are losing power and oxygen. But everyone stays calm, focused and shares data. I used to use it when training people about crisis management, because there's no situation that can't be made worse by panicking. If these guys can stay calm, so can you.

And getting back to the main story, the next time someone uses "Tammie Jo" or something similar as shorthand for "ignorant hick" point them at this story.
posted by YoungStencil at 12:08 PM on April 19, 2018 [4 favorites]


Captain Tammi Jo Shults is a badass through and through. From a Guardian article on the accident and attempts to save the passenger:
Diana McBride Self, a passenger, thanked Shults on Facebook for her “guidance and bravery in a traumatic situation”.

“This is a true American Hero,” McBride wrote. Others on social media agreed and compared Shults with Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, who guided his US Airways plane to safety in New York’s Hudson river in 2009 after birds flew into the engines after take off.

When contacted by the Washington Post, Shults declined to be interviewed.

But family told how she had battled from the late 70s onward, against almost blanket refusal from the military, to become a fighter pilot, eventually succeeding.

She was among the first female fighter pilots for the US navy, according to her alma mater, MidAmerica Nazarene University, from which she graduated in 1983, and among the first women to fly an F/A-18 Hornet for the navy.

Her mother-in-law, Virginia Shults, said that as soon as she heard the pilot’s voice on the radio transmission online, she said, “That is Tammie Jo.”

“It was just as if she and I were sitting here talking,” Virginia Shults told the Washington Post. “She’s a very calming person.”
I was also struck at how it's an all-women story. From the retired nurse Peggy Phillips, who tried to save the injured passenger Jennifer Riordan, a bank executive, to the pilot, a true blue badass.
posted by fraula at 12:09 PM on April 19, 2018 [24 favorites]


I was fine until I heard "149 souls onboard."
posted by slipthought at 12:27 PM on April 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


Soon after, Shults came into the cabin to check on passengers. “She came back and talked to every individual in there personally and shook every hand,” Tumlinson recalled...
posted by JoeZydeco at 12:28 PM on April 19, 2018 [2 favorites]


She's a hero, no other way to put it. That tiniest hint of a catch in her voice just as she says "someone went out" - that's a superhuman amount of control considering how much she likely knew - and knew she didn't yet know.

What an awful ordeal for everyone on that plane. I was really hoping the woman killed hadn't been wearing a seatbelt. As if that would give even a tiny extra illusion of control from the unimaginable happening.
posted by Mchelly at 12:32 PM on April 19, 2018 [4 favorites]


#2) Even while plummeting towards certain death, a good pilot will give out cool and calm observations on what is happening just in case that information can help the pilots that continue to live.

Incidentally, this is my biggest complaint with Star Trek and similar space opera shows - the away team will contact base, and say "oh shit! Wow! This is terrible! We have a BIG problem! Aaaagh!" instead of the desired "purple 80-foot-tall dragon is stomping through the city; it just stomped on city hall" or even the marginally useful "mygod it's huge! Everything's on fire! It's coming this way oh hell runrunrun!"

I always wind up thinking, didn't anything in your years-long Starfleet education teach you how to make a report to someone who isn't with you?

And in this, we have very clearly:
"we're single engine descending; we have a fire in number one."
"Have them roll the [fire] trucks for engine number one: captain's side."


Clear details; extra confirmation (#1 is captain's side, which theoretically ATC knows - but now nobody has to go get out the chart and look that up); answer every question with either a conformation or new info, absolutely no distractions about "this is terrible" or "I hope we get through this" - not that those never happen during emergency calls, but they happen after you have done what you can to fix the emergency.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 12:54 PM on April 19, 2018 [19 favorites]


An error in the transcript: "DMVA" should be "the MVA" (Minimum Vectoring Altitude for the curious).

I will also take this opportunity to encourage folks to learn to fly. It's a lot of fun and is cheaper than having kids.
posted by exogenous at 1:37 PM on April 19, 2018 [10 favorites]


So wait, I can buy a receiver and listen to these interactions through my sound system in my house, while listening to some sort of ambient album behind it too?
posted by gucci mane at 1:41 PM on April 19, 2018 [3 favorites]


I love at the end:
ATC: Southwest 1380, you go ahead and stop wherever you need to, that's fine.
Capt. Shults: Thank you, we're gonna stop here, right by these uh, fire trucks.
posted by notsnot at 1:46 PM on April 19, 2018 [35 favorites]


So wait, I can buy a receiver and listen to these interactions through my sound system in my house, while listening to some sort of ambient album behind it too?

I swear there was exactly that posted here a while ago - streaming ATC mixed with a soundtrack.

If you want to roll your own, you need a receiver capable of picking up airband frequencies (118-136 MHz VHF). You'll also need to, you know, be near an airport; 10-ish miles is a decent range. Decent scanners aren't cheap, unfortunately. Once you have a radio, you can find frequencies you might be able to get by heading over to AirNav and search for the airport you're interested in. Large airports may have multiple frequencies for tower, ground, and approach; small GA fields with low traffic usually share one frequency among a fairly large region.
posted by backseatpilot at 1:49 PM on April 19, 2018 [2 favorites]


You also can stream from the LiveATC website in your browser, or buy their app for your phone. It's fun once you get used to the language. I've never listened-in on an emergency, but you do hear some hilarious things on there from time to time.
posted by wintermind at 1:54 PM on April 19, 2018 [2 favorites]


So wait, I can buy a receiver and listen to these interactions through my sound system in my house, while listening to some sort of ambient album behind it too?

--I swear there was exactly that posted here a while ago - streaming ATC mixed with a soundtrack.

You are Listening to
posted by crush at 1:54 PM on April 19, 2018 [6 favorites]


No question, a true hero. And also: how amazing is the engeenering of modern aircrafts? Exploding engine with shrapnel thru the hull and gaping hole, yet lands without even a flat tire from 30000 feet.

And RIP Ms Riordan
.
posted by Malingering Hector at 2:10 PM on April 19, 2018 [2 favorites]


Aviation is this industry that I have no expertise in, and no desire to be part of (other than as a passenger), that fascinates me with how well it works. It's sad that someone has died, but it's the first domestic airline death since 2009, I believe, and only the second fatality that has occurred to my knowledge as the result of SW aviation (the first being a child in a car struck by a SW airliner that overran a runway), and I think there's something about that which makes me wonder what a world it could be if we applied some of that kind of thinking to:

- software dev
- law enforcement
- medical

just to cite 3 completely disparate examples. The latter two are more similar in that correct execution is absolutely critical to human life, and yet they don't work nearly as well as commercial aviation in the US.

And it's only the safety part. Commercial aviation sucks at pricing, customer service, and so many other things. But they don't kill people anywhere as often as other activities of comparable risk.

I'd say we should study that, but I'm afraid we'd screw something up in the process.
posted by randomkeystrike at 2:14 PM on April 19, 2018 [10 favorites]


We already do apply some of that thinking to software development for safety-critical systems in fields like aviation and medical devices. Like so many other things, you just have to make it a priority/pay for it.
posted by strange chain at 2:58 PM on April 19, 2018 [9 favorites]


The CVR records a loop (I forget what modern ones can do... 2 hours I think?)

The two hours is based on 14 CFR 121.359, which mandates that CVRs on turbine engine-powered airplanes must:
(2) Retains at least the last 2 hours of recorded information using a recorder that meets the standards of TSO-C123a, or later revision…
The current relevant FAA Technical Standing Order is TSO-C123c, which basically just points at European Organization for Civil Aviation Equipment (EUROCAE) document ED-112A, Minimum Operational Performance Specification for Crash Protected Airborne Recorder Systems .
posted by zamboni at 3:16 PM on April 19, 2018


I think of commercial pilots as "heroes of opportunity". I've read enough stories like this where something has gone terribly wrong and the pilot and flight crew stay calm and keep everyone they can safe that I'm convinced it's how pretty much every pilot would react in the same scenario.

Well, sadly, no.
posted by thelonius at 3:17 PM on April 19, 2018 [2 favorites]


But they don't kill people anywhere as often as other activities of comparable risk.

I'd argue they kill people exactly as often as other activities of comparable risk.
posted by Hatashran at 3:19 PM on April 19, 2018 [12 favorites]


Is there confirmation on whether or not Jennifer Riordan was wearing a seatbelt? It's so horribly tragic and scary either way, but I'm wondering if wearing a seatbelt provides any protection from this kind of incident.
posted by JenMarie at 3:25 PM on April 19, 2018


Ahhh, I have listened to youarelistening.to, but back when they only had police departments. I didn't know there were ATC transmissions on there. I wish they had PDX! I'm sort of close to the airport (only about 9.2 miles away, I can bike to it pretty easily from my house). How hard would it be to get a receiver setup?
posted by gucci mane at 3:34 PM on April 19, 2018 [2 favorites]


Aviate, Navigate, Communicate, flawlessly executed under massive pressure. You sort of hope for it and even expect it, but it doesn't always happen. I normally avoid flying Southwest but I'd fly with this captain and crew anytime.

After they x-ray all those fan blades.

And
.

for the lost soul.
posted by spitbull at 4:23 PM on April 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


Ms. Riordan was wearing her belt. It's the only thing that kept her in the plane.
posted by Megafly at 4:24 PM on April 19, 2018 [4 favorites]


If you like this, there's a whole genre on YouTube where people take ATC audio and subtitle it and, after the NTSB releases its investigation and supplementary material, will patch together visual aids, maps, or even software-made reconstructions of events. It is one of my favorite internet rabbit holes to fall down! The pilots ALWAYS sound that calm, it is uncanny.

Here's Miracle on the Hudson audio with someone recreating the flight path in software so you can see what the plane was seeing.

Here's a passenger (who had a pilot's license for a single engine plane) landing a small commercial plane (two engines, he'd never flown one like it before) with the assistance of ATC after the pilot died. Now this guy is actually freaking out, he is not as calm as a commercial pilot, but his "freaking the fuck out" is less panicked than I get when my kids won't put on their damn shoes and we're running late. He's clear, he's controlled, he's communicating, he's taking directions and figuring out how to the fly the plane as he goes, using the proper jargon, asking questions, etc., and it's really just by the fact that he babbles a bit (as he's thinking out loud and trying to figure out strange controls) and his voice is so dang tense that you can tell he's freaking out. (If you load up video 2 and skip to near the end, you can hear him landing, where his throat is so tight I tensed up in sympathy but he gets that bird on the ground.) This one's a little unusual and interesting because ATC coaches him down, so they do a lot more talking than usual, and they do a really nice job with being supportive and calming, while providing the right information at the right time, feeding him the next bit, etc.

(I do warn that you look up the accident before wading into YouTube ATC videos at random because they do not all have happy endings and I think the aviation folks who post them don't realize that not everyone knows the accident's outcome by callsign.)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 4:59 PM on April 19, 2018 [18 favorites]


That was completely riviting.
posted by Dip Flash at 8:44 PM on April 19, 2018 [2 favorites]


The Southwest pilot is a pro, carrier landings....forget about it, she is an expert in high stress landings. More generally for those of us with more fragile nerves the kind of hyper specific language you use in aviation communications is kind of soothing and focusing. The last time i called 911 about somebody having a heart attack, I had to walk a mile or so up the trail to get a signal and there was some confusion with the maps and signs and trail names. It really helped to get hyper specific and say things in the form of "three five six" instead of three hundred fifty six, it settled me down and made me communicate more effectively, which was good because the paramedics had gone to the wrong trailhead based on an earlier call.
posted by Pembquist at 9:42 PM on April 19, 2018


Uh holy shit, Eyebrows. I just listened to like 20 minutes of that ATC/passenger landing and I think I just now unclenched. Dude was SO CALM, right up until that little hitch in his voice when he says “we’re down, buddy; thank you,” all strangled and tight. People are kind of amazing...
posted by alleycat01 at 11:06 PM on April 19, 2018 [2 favorites]


... sooo yeah I just went down that rabbit hole and listened to three of these. It’s remarkable, in each one everyone is just so calm, to the point where I literally was like “wait did the plane land? When did it land??” It’s like a nonevent, with a genteel “oh hey thanks guys” thrown in offhandedly at the end. Man these people are professionals.
posted by alleycat01 at 11:50 PM on April 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


Sullenberger got Tom Hanks in his movie, so who will they pick to play Shults in the movie they undoubtedly will make about this? Sigourney Weaver? Laura Dern?
posted by wenestvedt at 3:08 AM on April 20, 2018 [2 favorites]


that ATC/passenger landing

The whole Doug White King Air 200 landing is a combination of luck (good and bad), and consummate professionalism.

White had learned to fly a couple of decades ago, but had only picked it up again four months earlier, and was working on getting an instrument rating. The King Air was owned by his company, but he'd only been in it once before. The other people on board were White's family, since they were flying back from his brother's funeral, who had died from a heart attack. Since he was getting back into flying, he had asked the pilot a bunch of questions, including one very important one, namely which button to press to use the radio, and was already sitting in the copilot seat when the pilot died. Of another heart attack. That's got to be a rough week.

He actually had to call his wife forward to tell her what had happened:
Terry White recalled that she was initially annoyed with her husband's tone, thinking he wanted her to bring him a soda.
The majority of US controllers are not pilots, which is why Miami Center turned control over from Nathan Henkels to Lisa Grimm, one of the other 96 controllers. Grimm used to be a flight instructor, and had spent two hours in a King Air, long enough to know how to disengage the autopilot, which was still climbing because the pilot died in the middle of programming it. Having got the King Air leveled off and pointed at the nearest airport, they talk White through switching to South Florida International ATC. Fort Meyers scrambled to find the two controllers on duty who had flight experience. Dan Favio was in the middle of his lunch break, and Brian Norton was on his way out to his car, having just finished his shift. Neither of them have been in a King Air 200.

Favio had been at Fort Meyers for two months, and wasn't yet fully qualified to work the console. Previously he'd been at an airport in Danbury, CT, where he got to be friends with a corporate pilot named Kari Sorenson, who had King Air experience. What you're hearing in the recording is Norton talking to White, while Favio is listening in and relaying the situation to Sorenson in CT via cell phone, then relaying instructions back to Norton. Sorenson hadn't been in a King Air since 1995, but had the experience, the manuals and cockpit layout. Sorenson had just gotten home from an Easter Sunday drive in a Model A with his girlfriend when he got the call. Sorenson rushed around pulling out old manuals, while his girlfriend Ashley turned on the computer so they could look up which avionics package was installed on White's plane. (Sorenson was actually grounded at the time, having lost his medical clearance due to depression.)

It all worked out, but Favio's cell phone died shortly after getting White on the ground.
“I came out of the radar room and called Kari back to let him know that they did land,” says Favio. “That was the last call that phone made. It didn’t get wet. It didn’t get dropped. It didn’t get anything. It just—that was it.”
The six controllers involved won the southern region’s Archie League Medal of Safety Award for 2009, as well as the President’s Award for the best flight assist in the country.
posted by zamboni at 7:05 AM on April 20, 2018 [25 favorites]


a couple of decades ago

s/nearly two decades ago. 1991 -> 2009.
posted by zamboni at 7:13 AM on April 20, 2018


Here's the site for the Archie awards for exemplary air traffic controllers that zamboni mentions. If you click through you can read stories and listen to recordings. (I'd just remembered that I made a post about these back in 2009.)
posted by exogenous at 7:35 AM on April 20, 2018 [3 favorites]


Man, zamboni, that was fpp worthy. A+
posted by slipthought at 7:49 AM on April 20, 2018 [1 favorite]


Those recordings and YouTube videos sound fascinating, but since I'm flying next week I'll take a big Nope on those, thank you very much.
posted by slogger at 8:06 AM on April 20, 2018


the site for the Archie awards for exemplary air traffic controllers that zamboni mentions. If you click through you can read stories and listen to recordings.

Here's the summary for the Doug White flight, awarded in 2010.
posted by zamboni at 8:10 AM on April 20, 2018 [2 favorites]


Yes. Calm, clear radio communications are taught from the beginning. General Aviation (GA) and all forms of first response activities teach that your best outcome only happens when the folks you're communicating with understand what you're saying.

All good pilots sound calm and comprehensible no matter the situation. There's a >99% chance that is not how the pilot is feeling, but training and experience overrides heartrate and bloodpressure. There is a very low percentage of people who actually experience a drop in heartrate in high stress situations. Although it is an abnormal reaction, it can enhance the likelihood of a positive outcome in certain occupations where fine motor control is more valuable than “fight or flight”.

Those who have the abnormal subdued calm response self select for activities where it is useful (and fun). Naval aviators doing carrier landings certainly seem a likely member of this group.

Was the SWA pilot as calm as she sounds? Maybe. But she has flown thousands of hours to sound that way and do the right thing to effect a positive outcome, regardless of how she feels. And keeping your shit together in the face of adversity is an awesome skill.

(I've probably been passenger on some of her flights. Cool!)
posted by lothar at 9:46 AM on April 20, 2018 [2 favorites]


gucci mane: Yes it's rather cheap to be able to listen to ATC chatter. Do a quick search for RTLSDR. (My first post to the Blue was on this subject.)
posted by endotoxin at 11:24 AM on April 20, 2018


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