Michael C Moynihan · @mcmoynihan
3rd Aug 2012 from Twitlonger
Again, a few people asked, so here is an example from Lehrer's second book, How We Decide. The following is attributed to an interview Lehrer supposedly conducted with Capt. Al Haynes, the pilot of United Flight 232, which crashed in 1989, killing 111 passengers:
"For most of my career, we kind of worked on the concept that the captain was the authority on the aircraft," says Al Haynes, the captain of Flight 232. "And we lost a few airplanes because of that. Sometimes the captain isn't as smart as we thought he was." Haynes freely admits that he couldn't have saved the plane by himself that day. "We had 103 years of flying experience there in the cockpit [on Flight 232], trying to get that airplane on the ground. If I hadn't used CRM, if we had not had everybody's input, it's a cinch we wouldn't have made it."
- Lehrer, pp 254-255 (footnote: "Al Haynes, interview with the author, January 21, 2008")
Now here is a lecture Capt. Al Haynes gave on May 24, 1991 about the crash of United flight 232:
"Up until 1980, we kind of worked on the concept that the captain was THE authority on the aircraft. What he said, goes. And we lost a few airplanes because of that. Sometimes the captain isn't as smart as we thought he was. And we would listen to him, and do what he said, and we wouldn't know what he's talking about. And we had 103 years of flying experience there in the cockpit, trying to get that airplane on the ground, not one minute of which we had actually practiced, any one of us."