Something About Heroism.

For people of any serious professional regimen, be that military, police and civilian pilots, heroism could be defined in a very dry way. Carrying out own professional duties under the circumstances which drastically impede carrying those duties out is heroism. I recall, Chesley Sullenberger and his crew beating everything deadly what the fate threw at them that day of 15 January, 2009 when their professionalism saved lives of 155 people. Miracle on Hudson was both miracle and skills, incredible skills of those who flew the plane. But apart from elation when seeing on live TV all ferries on Hudson rushing to save those passengers from Hudson's cold waters, it was Sully's incredible humility which struck me then--that humility was a true measure of a true Man. That he, and his crew, were heroes we knew already the moment we could see the doors of US Airways A-320 popping open and people getting out to aircraft's wings.

Yesterday Russia got her own miracle in the corn field. Simply stunning and simply no words of the humility of this crew, which, led by their incredible first pilot, did almost impossible--saved 234 people. 

Yet again, the true measure of a Man--humility. "I just did my job". Hell no, you didn't--you told death "fvck you" and refused to surrender lives of men, women and children on-board. This is pure heroism. The similarity, despite obvious dramatic differences--water against hard ground--is startling in a sense of timing: few seconds to make the only correct decision, in case of Ural Airlines A-321, not to lower landing gear and get the aircraft into the field on its belly, as in case of Sully--splash down, don't even try to get to the nearest airport. This is "Carrying out own professional duties under the circumstances which drastically impede carrying those duties out". They succeeded and people lived. I would also be dishonest if I will not point out that in both cases these were Airbus 320-321 series aircraft which turned out to be tough mofos. Kudos to Airbus. Meanwhile, I cannot describe in words the wave of inspiration drowning Russia out now, same as it was 10 years ago with Miracle on Hudson. That is what real heroes do to people--they give them their faith in humanity back. Damir Ysupov and your flight crew--you did just that. Congratulations to both pilots on the highest honor of Heroes of Russia and cabin crew with their Orders of Courage--well done, heroes.    

This Is Not Good.

WSJ reports:


Boeing Withheld Information on 737 Model, According to Safety Experts and Others 

This is more than just "not good", this is down right scary.

The automated stall-prevention system on Boeing 737 MAX 8 and MAX 9 models -- intended to help cockpit crews avoid mistakenly raising a plane's nose dangerously high -- under unusual conditions can push it down unexpectedly and so strongly that flight crews can't pull it back up. Such a scenario, Boeing told airlines in a world-wide safety bulletin roughly a week after the accident, can result in a steep dive or crash -- even if pilots are manually flying the jetliner and don't expect flight-control computers to kick in. That warning came as a surprise to many pilots who fly the latest models for U.S carriers. Safety experts involved in and tracking the investigation said that at U.S. carriers, neither airline managers nor pilots had been told such a system had been added to the latest 737 variant -- and therefore aviators typically weren't prepared to cope with the possible risks."It's pretty asinine for them to put a system on an airplane and not tell the pilots who are operating the airplane, especially when it deals with flight controls," said Capt. Mike Michaelis, chairman of the safety committee for the Allied Pilots Association, which represents about 15,000 American Airlines pilots. "Why weren't they trained on it?"

Make no mistake--I am all for automation, where it is needed. But I am also, and primarily so, for high level of professional training of personnel which provides a set of fundamental skills allowing professional pilots, mariners, surgeons, what have you, to be independent of "technology" in critical situations while deciding when and how to engage it. We just saw another example of a loss of a situational awareness and of extremely low level of fundamental professional skills here:

At least in Norway no people got killed, in case of Indonesian Boeing every one on board died. Somebody at Boeing has to answer for this major FUBAR and higher-ups there at least may try to remind people who write all kinds of software for commercial aircraft that it is not a freaking video-game they are coding--people's safety is at stake. But that opens another can of worms altogether--technophilia taken to the extreme in a firm conviction, primarily among people who do not have required complex skills such as piloting, that machines can do everything for us. They can't, and they shouldn't. In the end, the Miracle on Hudson occurred primarily for the reasons of Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger and his crew's superb professional human skills under the conditions of almost complete failure of technology. In the end, I would be extremely apprehensive while being flown in the aircraft in which pilots are merely operators of the cockpit at the service of main on-board computer, or to be driven in pilot-less cars--another wet dream of office plankton who thinks that human lives can be described in Java or C++. 

Most of all, I  would be very, and I am, apprehensive of exclusion of a human professional from the decision loop in Combat Informational Control Systems (aka Battle Management) responsible for the use of sensors and weapons because in this case a Skynet scenario becomes not only possible but reasonably probable. In warfare, I am all for networks and AI but only under conditions of a human having his hand at the switch. I really hope that Boeing learns its (tragic) lesson because I like Boeing's aircraft but the idea that those could become simply uncontrollable pieces of metal with no ability to get them under control is, frankly, terrifying.