Freedom of a Locked Room

I picked this short article up yesterday and will use it to leverage a short discussion on compliance, judgment, and the difference between the terms capable and qualified. Here it is:

Pilot Tells Passengers 'I'm Not Qualified to Land Plane'
Thursday, December 18, 2008

A pilot with more than 30 years experience was forced to turn his plane around — because he was not qualified to land in fog, an airline confirmed Thursday. Passengers on the 8:45 AM Flybe flight to Paris were just minutes away from landing at their destination when they were told they would have to go all the way back to Cardiff, England.

One passenger from Bristol missed a job interview in France because of the incident. Cassandra Grant explained: "Twenty minutes outside Paris, the captain said, 'Unfortunately I'm not qualified to land the plane in Paris. They are asking for a level two qualification and I only have a level five. We'll have to fly back.'"

A spokeswoman for the airline said Flybe, a low-cost airline, backed the pilot's decision "100 percent." He had recently switched from flying a Bombardier Q300 to a Bombardier Q400 and has not completed the "requisite low-visibility training," she said. The dense fog covering Charles de Gaulle airport had not been there when the flight took off, she added. The plane was already three hours late due to bad weather in Wales. The pilot's situation is "quite unusual but probably not unheard of," according to the Civil Aviation Authority.

The obvious slant of this article – and the initial reaction from many readers – is “What kind of pilot with 30 years of experience can’t land in low visibility conditions?” The key to answering this question lies in defining the difference between what an individual is capable of doing, and what he is formally qualified to do.

Capabilities > Qualifications = Discipline and Compliance

There are many times when your capabilities will exceed your qualifications. I suspect this was likely the case with the airline Captain in this article. Although frustrating, this was a non-decision for the pilot. The decision was made for him by policy. Unfortunately, not everyone has the level of maturity or understanding to see the world though the simple but powerful lens of compliance.

Individuals who have this type of uncompromising personal and professional discipline operate with purpose and clarity – what I often call the “freedom of a locked room.” Absent an emergency situation, the rules make the decision for you, as well as protecting you from the second guessing of armchair quarterbacks operating at groundspeed zero. Compliance is the link between good policy and safe mission accomplishment. There is no need to ponder unauthorized options based on what your physical skill set might or might not be on any given day. In an ironic twist to the angle of this article – a less professional airman might have flown the approach into Paris and made the landing.

Qualifications > Capabilities = Courage and Judgment

But there are also times when our qualifications exceed our capabilities – and this is a much more difficult test of professionalism. Let’s assume for the moment that this Captain was qualified to fly to the lower visibility minimums, but was having difficulty flying a stabilized approach on this particular day due to any one of a hundred factors. Would he try to will the aircraft to the ground by continuing an unstabilized approach because his qualifications said he should be able to fly it – or execute a missed approach and proceed to an alternate based on his subjective evaluation of his limited abilities on this day?

Qualification levels are fixed sums – coldly objective, they not affected by mission or peer pressures or the urgency of the moment. Or at least they shouldn't be. Capabilities on the other hand, are subjective, and by definition can be altered by different states of personal readiness (physiological or psychological) or internal or external pressures to perform. Accurately ascertaining our capability level in real time is true connoisseurship, and the decision to admit when personal proficiency is the limiting factor is one of the most distinguishing marks of a true pro.

What kind of pilot tells his passengers he “can’t land the plane?” Whether the decision is based on professional discipline, compliance or personal self-awareness, the answer is the same - a professional one. Well done, Captain.

The Gift of Borrowed Time

I let yesterday pass without comment, just like the 9,131 days that preceded it since 9 Dec 1983. On that memorable date 25 years ago yesterday, I was at the controls of a KC-135A air refueling tanker and was involved in a human error induced mid-air collision with an E-3 AWACs with a call sign of Sentry 99. Without going into grisly detail - miscommunication, poor risk management, oversized egos and an inexperienced 2nd Lieutenant with less than 500 hours flying time (that would be me) combined into a sequence of events that put two very large, fast moving aircraft at the same exact coordinates of time and space. It was a severe collision that ripped large pieces off of both aircraft. It is no exaggeration to state that it was an event no one should have survived. Yet we all did. For some unknown – and perhaps unknowable – reason, I was spared from an event that should have taken my life.

From my perspective, I have lived on borrowed time since that moment.

Only from this side of the last 25 years can I gauge the magnitude of this gift. Sons that would never have been born, achievements that would have never been realized, love and life that would have never been experienced – all turned on that 11 seconds of metal on metal over the skies of the Persian Gulf.

In 1898, The English Dialect Dictionary defined the phrase borrowed time this way. "A man who lives on borrowed time lives on trespass-ground." To me this means that those of us whose time on earth has been extended through no fault of our own, need to earn our keep.

I have had one or two other near death experiences since then, but none quite so spectacular. My quest since that fateful day has been to discover and fulfill the reason for this gift and to “pay my way forward.” I’m not sure what this experience might mean to others, but I do see a difference between those who see their time on earth as a right of birth vs. a gift. I have no such burden of expectation that life owes me anything. For me, it will always be the other way around and for that clarity and every future moment, I am grateful.