Dive 76: Deadly Distractions
Hey, it’s Alvin!
Around midnight on December 29, 1972, an Eastern Air Lines Lockheed L-1011 flown by a captain and two co-pilots crashed into the Florida Everglades. 101 people lost their lives.
Most of the flight from New York was uneventful. But as the flight crew prepared to land in Miami, the flight took a turn for the worse.
As the plane approached the airport, the crew pulled down a lever to lower the landing gear. There was just one problem. When the nose gear (the wheels at the front of the plane) is lowered and locked into place, a green indicator light on the panel in front of them is supposed to turn on.
But it didn’t.
That’s worrying because if the nose gear isn’t locked in place, then the nose of the plane can collapse onto the runway on landing. The multi-million-dollar plane could be damaged. And a rough landing could injure passengers. So, the pilots try pushing up the lever and pulling it back down. Again, the light doesn’t turn on.
The plane was nearing the airport. But the pilots weren’t ready to land. They still had to figure out whether the nose gear was extended. So, they set the autopilot to hold their plane at 2000 feet while they continued troubleshooting.
The captain and first officer tried removing the light assembly but had trouble getting it out. When they got it removed, they had trouble getting it back in. While still fiddling with the light assembly, the captain turned around to ask the second officer behind him to go down below the cockpit, where he could also see if the nose gear was down. But the second officer had trouble seeing in the dark.
This troubleshooting continued for about 7 minutes, when the first officer noticed that something was not right…
First Officer: We did something to the altitude.
Captain: What?
First Officer: We’re still at 2000 feet, right?
Captain: Hey, what’s happening here?
3 seconds later, the radio altimeter starts beeping. That’s the instrument that measures altitude.
2 seconds after that, the plane smashes into the ground.
So, what happened?
The pilots turned on the autopilot and autothrottle to hold their altitude and speed. It was so they could circle around the air while they troubleshooted the problem.
Investigators suspect the captain may have accidentally bumped the steering column when he turned to talk to the second officer. The autopilot disengaged when enough force was applied to the steering column. The captain and first officer may have also disengaged the autothrottle when they were fiddling with the nose gear indicator light nearby.
At that point, no one was flying the plane.
But airplanes are aerodynamic. So, they won’t just fall out of the sky. Without control inputs, they’ll just glide. Of course, without enough throttle, the plane lacks forward thrust to maintain an altitude.
So, the plane descended gradually. When the plane dropped 250 feet below their previously set altitude, the flight crew got a half-second chime. But no one acknowledged the chime or took any action, likely because the nose gear light distracted them.
Investigators concluded that the first officer was distracted trying to replace the nose gear indicator light. And the captain was distracted by helping his first and second officers trying to figure out what was happening with their nose gear. They were all distracted from their most important job.
Flying the plane.
A plane full of passengers went down because of a single light… which was burnt out.
You and I might not be pilots, but we’re just as susceptible to focusing too much on one thing at the expense of another. Psychologists call this “cognitive tunneling.” Some people call it “tunnel vision,” or “missing the forest for the trees.”
I saw this firsthand when I posted one of my visuals on Twitter (currently known as “X”).
The Tormenting Turkey
I posted the following visual back when X was called Twitter, and someone else reposted it recently:
I’m happy to say about 90% of people get the message.
But there’s a weird 5% of people who have a bizarre fixation on the fact that I used a Fahrenheit scale. When a nerdy nitpicker looks at this visual, the one thought that occupies and torments their entire existence is that the Fahrenheit scale is not linear like the Kelvin scale.
So what?
The math (inequality) is still valid.
The metaphor is still valid.
The cooking lesson is still valid.
Even if you use Kelvins, you can’t cook it at a much higher heat in much less time without a burnt outside and a raw inside. Are we to ignore the principles of thermal conductivity? What about the biochemistry of turkey meat? And how high heat causes rapid protein denaturation drying out the meat quickly?
I’m trolling, of course. Most people understood this as a metaphor and commentary on productivity, business, and life.
Interpret this visual how you want. Like it. Hate it. I don’t care.
I just hope the Kelvin-lovers aren’t reading this while crossing the street.
What bothers me is how easily we can obsess over the shapes of the smallest stones when there are massive mountains to climb. This seems more prevalent nowadays because the internet offers so many distractions. Not just any distractions. But Black Hole Distractions that draw us in and trap us. And that’s a problem.
The Human Condition
We live in a world where people are distracted by Tik Tok dances when there are critical societal issues that deserve attention.
We live in an era when people are distracted by headlines when the bodies of news articles present contradictory evidence.
We live in a time when people are distracted by shiny new technological gimmicks when their long-term consequences are overlooked.
The problem is that we’re not just distracted by an indifferent entity like nature. We’re distracted by crafty marketers and salespeople who know how to shift our focus away from dangers. Politicians are notorious for this.
That’s why it’s important to look at the world with a skeptical eye and a critical mind. Over the years, I trained myself so when someone tells me nothing but good (or bad) things about something; I seek the opposite.
Be skeptical.
Seek a balanced view.
Yes, even for what I wrote here.
Never forget to zoom out for the big picture.
It’s the only way to ensure you don’t fixate so much on the light bulb that you forget to fly your plane.
Reply to belowthesurfacetop@gmail.com or click “Message Alvin” below if you have questions or comments. I’d love the hear from you.
Thank you for reading. Fly your plane. And I’ll see you in the next one.