Cockpit Communication Questioned in Asiana Investigation
A new wrinkle in the mystery surrounding the crash raises questions about not only how pilots are trained to fly new aircraft, but also the if the communication protocol in the cockpit differs based on culture. In a piece for National Geographic, Clark Howard asks if author Malcolm Gladwell’s Theory of Cockpit Culture could apply to Asiana Crash? In the 2008 best selling book Outliers, Gladwell wrote about the safety record of Korean Air. In the book, Gladwell said that Korean Air’s problem at the time was not old planes or poor crew training.
“What they were struggling with was a cultural legacy, that Korean culture is hierarchical.”
Former Navy pilot and aviation attorney Dan Rose of Kreindler and Kreindler, LLP, said he was not aware of any specific issues with Korean culture affecting professional pilot crews. According to former Navy pilot and aviation attorney Dan Rose, once a crew is in the cockpit, all cultural irregularities need to disappear. Rose told MSNBC’s Craig Melvin that the 3 rules of flying are “Aviate, Communicate, Navigate.”
However, an editorial in The Korean Times objected what was characterized as a rush to judgement:
“The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport was right in this regard to send a letter to NTSB calling for a “fair and objective” probe and providing information in a “regular and faithful” manner. It was a roundabout way of saying that the ways of the U.S. agency in conducting investigation have fallen short of meeting international standards, at least in the eyes of its Korean counterparts.”
The editorial goes on to state that “Korean airliners were ranked as the world’s safest carriers by International Civil Aviation Organization for the past decade or so.”
