Who is In Charge?

Who's In Charge, Here?

It's not always clear. And the results of uncertainty are sometimes terrible.

Consider for a moment, the case of the Royal Mail Ship TITANIC. The pride of the White Star Line, the ocean liner famously met her fate on the flat-calm moonless morning of April 15th, 1912. Back then, trans-oceanic travel was a severely big deal. Rich clientele would book passage with favorite ships and also with favorite captains. White Star badgered Captain EJ Smith away from retirement for one last turn of the wheel, aboard the giant steamship's maiden voyage.

This was fine, as far as it went. But leading lights of White Star would also share the journey, including Joseph (J Bruce) Ismay, the chairman of the line. These gentlemen had different goals for the journey than perhaps those of Captain Smith.

Flash ahead to that last evening, the weather reports and ice reports and wouldn't it be grand to arrive early in New York and surprise all of the newspapers? It would be easier to sell tickets for a grand ship like TITANIC if it could be seen as opulent and fast, though speed was never a design consideration. A more prudent option may have been to throttle back while traversing the icy area, or to take a more southerly route. Or at least to post more lookouts, and make sure they had the proper optics for their duty.

The White Star brass knew Captain Smith was experienced. They knew he would not place their new ship at undue risk. But while Smith was the boss of the boat, his boss was also aboard. And his boss would like to get to New York ahead of expectation. Smith knew his authority was unchallenged—he was doing this last run as a favor and there was nothing White Star could do to harm him or his retirement. And Ismay knew Smith wouldn't run the ship any faster than was prudent, given prevailing conditions.

The upshot of the whole thing is the majestic ship pointed at a dark mass and unable to steer clear of it without brushing against it for half the length of the ship, popping rivets and bending panels allowing water in. They say that given the weight of the water needed and the time it took, the "Gash" the press talked about amounted to just twelve square feet, spread out over hundreds of feet of the ship's length. A pantry door left open to the sea 2' by 6' for a couple of hours and it was all over.

More recently, consider the case of young Jessica Dubroff. Jessica was only seven years old, in 1996, when she was attempting to become "the youngest person to cross the country in an airplane". This was in its entirety a media stunt. To be a student pilot, you have to be at least sixteen years old. Jessica was not. So Jessica was in no way the pilot, or even a pilot aboard the airplane. For the trip to be legal, though, someone would have to be a pilot, and for Jessica to have any legitimate place, that someone would have to be a certified flight instructor. Enter Joe Reid. For all government and insurance purposes, Reid would be pilot in command for the entire trip. Reid was fifty-two years old, a stockbroker, and the registered owner of the Cessna used for the "record". Her father would also accompany her on the trip.

There had been a few kids who rode along on flights like this over the years. Nobody remembers because they weren't really records, but still, the trend was younger and younger children. Jessica's trip was designed for media coverage. ABC even gave her a camera to record her journey. She was given several minutes of national TV news coverage, appeared in hundreds of newspapers and magazines and some huge percentage of the country was at least somewhat aware of the little girl that they thought was trying to set a record by flying across the country.

The left California with a big farewell. They traveled west-to-east and finished up the day on TV again. It was all very scripted. Look at how far she's come! What a challenge, yadda-yadda-yadda. A fifty-two year old pilot had flown from Half Moon Bay to Cheyenne, with a little girl at his side, her dad in the back, and somehow it was news.

The next morning the three of them went to the airport. Forecast weather had arrived—a big storm. Normally, pilots wait out weather like this, but it was highly localized over the neighborhood and they had a media schedule to adhere to. They had to be in Lincoln, Nebraska, in time for interviews and editing and getting the taped piece to NewYork for the evening news. So while airliners waited for the weather to clear, Reid took off, nearly a hundred pounds overweight.

They took off, and bobbled under, into and out of clouds as they swung around to the east, going slower and slower. Finally, the aircraft stalled and crashed in someone's front yard. But here again, who was in charge?

Technically, legally, it was Reid. But Reid was being paid as an instructor and/or a charter pilot. And he was being paid by the guy in the back seat, who may or may not have known how dangerous their situation really was. Dad might have thought, people drive through this kind of weather all the time, right? So, let's go. We've got reporters to meet. And if it gets too bad, we can always come back and wait it out. And he's thinking Reid is an experienced pilot and he wouldn't get us into anything he couldn't get us out of.

And Reid is thinking we have to make time, we have to make time. And it's not really-really bad. Let's go up and take a look—it's a small storm and we'll probably be out of it before we have the chance to make too many mistakes, anyway. And little Jessica likely had no idea at all the risks involved.

There are hundreds of sayings in Aviation. Little homilies and platitudes we use to remember important lessons. One of my favorite's says "Pilots who crash in bad weather are almost always buried on nice days". There is no wait that's too long, too inconvenient, when it comes to flying and weather.