A notoriously testosterone-charged profession
An interesting story on what the pilot had to deal with to land that crippled plane safely yesterday.
Just how masterfully Tammy Jo Shults, the pilot of the badly crippled Southwest Airlines Flight 1380, handled the problem of an engine exploding at 30,000 feet is winning admiration from thousands of her fellow pilots—and should finally help to temper the hubris of what has been a notoriously testosterone-charged profession.
Consider this: the Boeing 737’s left engine suffered a catastrophic failure when one of its fan blades—a part that looks like a pirate’s scimitar and is just as lethal when let loose—broke away, ripped through the engine casing that was supposed to contain it, and then, along with other pieces of shrapnel, tore into the skin of the airplane’s cabin.
Airplane cabins are like a pressure vessel. At 30,000 feet, where the jet was when the failure occurred, the pressure inside the cabin was far higher than in the outside air. The debris instantly punctured this pressure vessel, releasing an explosive rush of air. One cabin window was shattered and with the violent release of air, the woman seated at that window, Jennifer Rioardan, was partly sucked out, suffering injuries that were fatal.
Oxygen masks dropped, so the passengers could breathe, but they were still terrified.
The pilots’ first priority was to make a rapid descent to 10,000 feet where the difference between the outside air pressure and the cabin pressure begins to equalize. This greatly reduces the risk that other parts of the cabin structure will rupture because of the pressure stresses.
At the same time Shults was talking to controllers.
For any pilot in this situation the most difficult and urgent thing to judge is how responsive the airplane is to their commands. An airplane as crippled as this one becomes difficult to handle. With only one engine working and damage to the other causing unusual air drag, the pilot must correct for asymmetrical power and drag—the airplane naturally tends to swing away from its direct course.
The pilot had to do it herself:
the flight controls of the Southwest 737, although monitored through computers, remain as they were in the analog age, with the pilot controlling directly through a “yoke.”
And this is where Captain Shults’ background came into play. She was an ex-Navy pilot and one of the first women to fly the “Top Gun” F-18 Hornet, eventually becoming an instructor. Landing supersonic jets on the decks of aircraft carriers is one of the most demanding skills in military aviation. Now, flying on the one engine called for her to use all of her “seat of the pants” instincts to nurse the jet to the runway.
Normally a 737 on final approach would deploy its wing flaps to their full extent, to reduce landing speed to around 140 mph. But Captain Shults’ skills and experience forewarned her that an airplane flying that slowly with its flaps fully extended and with asymmetrical power could become fatally unstable in the final stage of the landing, so she used a minimal flap setting to maintain a higher speed and stability—taking the risk that the landing gear and particularly the tires could [not] survive a higher speed impact.
…
Captain Shults faced another problem with the speed of the landing: she could not deploy the airplane’s engine thrust reversers to help brake the speed after touchdown because of the damage to her left engine. However the touchdown was perfect and, once slowed, the jet came to rest on a taxiway where a fire crew sprayed the damaged engine with foam and put out a small fire from leaking fuel.
God damn. Imagine being on a crippled plane and coming in to land at higher than normal speed and then no engine thrust reversers. You expect the thrust reversers; they’re deployed almost as soon as the wheels touch, and they give you that nice “we are going to be able to stop before we crash into the terminal” feeling. High speed landing and no thrust reversers. [shudder]
When she announced in her senior year at high school that she wanted to be a pilot a retired colonel told her “there are no professional women pilots.” That was, apparently, a problem for her when she applied to train to be a pilot in the Air Force. They rejected her, but the Navy gave her the break—and, obviously, it was a very smart move, particularly for everyone aboard Flight 1380.
Tailhook or no Tailhook.
A lifetime of determination and honed skills has paid off. (Not only money-wise.)
Many commenters elsewhere have already noted the silence from Trump now, after taking credit for the low number of airline accidents earlier.
“there are no professional women pilots.”
That could go both ways. I want to, optimistically, think he was trying to tell her that if that’s what she wants she should go after it. I’m afraid he was just living his generation. It takes people like Shults to change that attitude.
One of the greatest joys in my life was sitting in the right seat while my daughter took me up in a 172 for the first time. To see her discipline, skill, and confidence at the controls still causes me to get a lump in my throat. See’s a natural. It’s also nice to see how the other pilots, mostly men, encourage and support her.
“there are no professional women pilots.”
Yeah does anyone know whether that was actually true at the time? If so, he could have just been stating a fact, possibly to warn her it would be difficult, not necessarily to tell her she shouldn’t/couldn’t do it. Like if someone were to say today, “There are no female American presidents.”
Anna, that may be. But there is a risk there. Where I teach, we frequently get female students in the automotive department. The instructor sits them down and explains to them that they will face discrimination and hostility from the males. The instructor never sits down the males and says “They will not face discrimination and hostility or you will answer to me”.
I can be charitable, and accept that he believes this is in the best interest of the female students, that he wants to prepare them for the eventuality they will face outside of the classroom, and that it never occurs to him to try to change the situation, or that he can. I can be uncharitable, and assume that he is trying to persuade the female students to leave them alone. I have no way of knowing, other than my own experience in the world, as men tried to persuade me (and women – especially my mother – tried to persuade me) that science was no field for a woman. Of the people I knew, their motive was always the same – get me out of science, married, and pregnant as soon as possible, and keep me in my place. Therefore, I tend toward the uncharitable assumption, because I have very few examples of the opposite.
Still, I can see that the other explanation is possible, though I see it as being wrongheaded. If that is what he is meaning, it should be followed with a “you go girl” or the equivalent of the time. Left sitting there, it is a discouragement, plain and simple.
As to the question of female commercial pilots, I’d point to out that Allied air forces in WW2 used female pilots to ferry aircraft. They were paid, therefore professional. Captain Deborah Lawrie, was the first female commercial pilot in Australia in 1979. That was Captain Shults senior year. Lawrie was not the first anywhere either. Professional female pilots may have been rare, but they were/had been around, both in military and civilian professional aviation. The Colonel’s comment smacks of bias.
Even today, when female commercial pilots are ‘common’, they still make up less than 7% of the total. It’s like a discussion I had with some colleagues recently. Someone asked what the % of female engineering students was currently. A person (male) authoritatively stated ‘about half based on what I’ve seen’. A couple of weeks later official figures were released – 15%.
Rob, that fits with my experiences. I have a young friend who thought there were no more barriers to women, because his school had about 3 women professors for every man. I thought it was interesting that he assumed his school was the same as every other, but then I decided to check it out. I went to his school website and counted. There were 3 men for every woman. Makes me wonder about another friend who said something similar about his school; I don’t remember where he went to school, so it isn’t possible to check it out, and he’s moved on.
I think when men see more than one woman in their place of business, they begin to think there are more than there are…why? I guess that’s part of the sense of entitlement. The men feel normal. The women feel different, so they notice them, and when you have a group that has 5 women and 15 men, they see it as 45 women…or something. Because women are unusual, abnormal, different, don’t belong, so they notice them. And these two young male friends are people who profess to seeing nothing strange about women in any field, and believe they are very supportive of women’s rights (and may be, but can’t see their own biases).
[…] a comment by iknklast on A notoriously testosterone-charged […]
Iknklast, I’ve seen (possibly on this blog) links to studies that show that men overestimate how many women are in their workplace and also how much time women spend talking at meetings.
It’s depressing as all shit. Even decent men who would be appalled at being thought of as sexist easily fall into this sort of behaviour and are quite blind to it.
We recently had a discussion in our company around diversity. Ours is a great company with very good communication and feel to it. One senior partner queried how diversity would work, when every time he hires someone it’s on the basis of merit. His question was, ‘what do you do if after 10 years it turns out every hire was male, but they were the best?’ My answer was that it might be possible that every time a male was best, but that over time I would expect that the % of female hires should be in rough proportion to the % of female applicants if we were hiring only on the basis of merit. We know that academic merit is not confined to men only in our field and we already have around 25% female staff. There was a pretty heavy silence and a troubled look from across the table.
Progress on these things is slow at the best of times. In small pockets I think great progress is being made. However, many societies seem to be under the sway of deeply regressive, conservative and authoritarian voices at present.
A headline from NBC news proclaimed, “Woman who landed plane was first female…”
Note they do not not describe her as a pilot. So, was she just a woman acting like a pilot?
And, of course, women flew combat missions for the Soviet air force through most of WWII. Lily Litvak was an ace over Stalingrad. And at least one night-bombing squadron was female all the way down to the truck drivers and engine mechanics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Witches