HS 349 - FBF - Why Planes Crash with David Soucie

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It's my pleasure to welcome David Susi to the show. He is the author of why planes crash and is a former FAA investigator and inspector. He is certainly an expert on making the skies safer. And we'll talk about commercial aviation and a little bit on general aviation as well. David, welcome. How are you?

Great. Thanks for having me on your show.

Well, the pleasure is all mine. So it seems that at least in the commercial realm, airplane safety or airline safety, maybe I should say, has improved so much over the years and it just doesn't seem to be much of a concern anymore. In the commercial realm, would that be a fair statement? I mean, of course it's a concern because there are Crashes. But they're pretty rare nowadays, aren't they?

Yeah, they are rare, and it has improved significantly. I was with the FAA for 17 years, and during that time I saw certain a lot of projects that improve safety. There's a lot of projects that we did that had no impact on safety, which is a little frustrating at times. But we kept trying and I think that we've really improved safety quite a deal.

What have been some of the big jumps and improvements over the years and understanding why crashes? Maybe just talk about some of the major causes and the way they've resolved those.

Well, I think the biggest improvement has been just aviation safety information analysis system called A S. And that's the way in which we share information about precursors, things that look at what might change, that might cause an accident down the road. But that project was built on a lot of fatalities and a lot of accidents. My look at this is that we need to really change the way that we look at improving safety. Even though it's safe right now, there's a lot of room for improvement. And I'm worried that the safer we feel, the more vulnerable we become.

Well, you know, that's actually a good point because we become complacent. You know, Napoleon has that great quote, the most dangerous moment comes with victory. And if we, if we feel that we've been victorious over, you know, most of the safety problems, that may be the problem. That complacency, right?

Yes, that's exactly right. In fact, seven days before the Gulf tragedy of the oil spill down there, I've been asked to go back and speak with those groups that do that type of work.

You're talking about the BP oil spill?

Yes, the BP oil spill in the Gulf. And seven days before that occurred, all the management had flown out to the platform and given a great award to those people that were managing that platform because they'd gone so long without a safety incident. Seven days before that, one of the worst catastrophes of all time.

Yeah, really, really ironic. So what are some of the areas of biggest concern nowadays, safety wise?

Well, that being one is just complacency. It's not looking around and not understanding that people that fly on the airplanes, all the passengers, everyone that is involved with that airplane is part of the safety system. You know, I fly a lot and when I do, I look around and I try to talk to the people next to me and get to know them and see what they're doing and where they're going, and they think that I'm just being intrusive but when in fact, what I'm really doing is trying to make sure that they're aware of what's going on and make sure that I know that I'm not sitting next to a terrorist or whatever. But importantly as well, is that I look overnight and they're looking at their iPhones or they're looking at their computers, and they're completely removed from their environment. They don't understand where they are and what they're doing. They're flying through the air at near the speed of sound, a couple miles above the earth, and they're sitting there just completely relaxed and have no idea that there's any kind of risk around them. Two or three accidents have been prevented by people who were aware and noticed that there was smoke coming out from above. I'll take one example. The gentleman, as they were taxiing out, he already had his belts on, and everybody's sitting down and he's there taxiing out, and he sees this mist coming out from the top above the baggage compartment area on top storage, and he's concerned and looked and looked, and they all sat there and he asked the guy next to him, they go, oh, no, that's just steam. You know, we're flying out of the high humidity area, so that's really nothing to worry about. He got more and more concerned and realized, you know, I think I smell smoke too. And eventually he got so concerned, he unbuckled his belt and went up to the flight attendant and told her. And she of course, told him, get back in your seat, put your seatbelt on. He goes, I'm not sitting down until this. You figure out what this smoke is. And he was almost arrested. You know, everybody is so aware of this type of situation that they were jumping on him and making him sit down and do whatever. And ultimately they stopped and brought the airplane back and found out there was a fire going on up above. If they had taken off, that airplane would have crashed and burned, and certainly we would have had a lot of fatalities from that accident. But this gentleman was aware.

Yeah, the lesson is be aware. And then secondly, don't be shy. Even if the other passengers think you're nuts or you're a terrorist or whatever, you've got to get the word out so that the flight crew can take action. Now, what was that fire caused by, though? Why would there be a fire up above? It must have been electrical, I assume.

Yeah, it was electrical. There was a ballast. You know, those old neon lights that have ballasts in them that fluorescent lights charge it up and flip on the lights.

Yeah, yeah, the fluorescent lights.

Yeah. They did use those in the airplanes until this occurred. And then subsequent to that, an FAA inspector took his time and wrote up a good report and convinced everyone that they needed to replace all those. So those ballasts do not exist in airplanes right now, at least not in the United States.

I've always been curious about the way the FAA interacts with the rest of the world. Does the rest of the world for airline safety really so of look to the US and to the FAA or do other countries? I mean, you know, I've flown internationally extensively. I've been to 64 countries. And, you know, I always wonder what, who's. Who's keeping track of things. Over in Egypt, for example, you know.

Each country has its own civil aviation authority of some kind. However, the FAA is certainly considered a leader in the global, Global environment in aviation. So when you go, you know, I've been to several other foreign countries to help them work out their regulations. And as I go there, pretty much what they start with is this template, which is the Federal Aviation Regulations. And then from there, they kind of temper them into their particular environments and things like that. For example, in Africa, there's very few countries down there that you have to worry too much about icing conditions. So in certain regions down there, they take those regulations we have about how to do icing and all of that out of the regulations and requirements for the airlines down there. So they customize the regulations into each country. But yeah, pretty much the FAA is the standard and they work off of that.

And what else can passengers do? Awareness, not being shy. You know, is there anything else? I think that's why most people sit there looking at their phone or reading something, because, you know, other than knowing where the exit doors are, I mean, put your mask on first. I mean, everybody's heard that a thousand times. What else can you really do?

Well, there is so many things that can be done, and in my book, I touch on a few, but not really. It's not a survival guide in any means, but the awareness is really the key factor. There are other things you can do. For example, one of the things that I get a little concerned about is that when you go through security and you see the guy and we've all seen him, and we might even have been this guy at one point, I think I probably even did this at one point. But you go through there and you think, oh, gosh, these guys are. You know, it's overkill. It's whatever and they're going to pad me down or I got to go through this, got to go through that. And you start complaining of other people and it just makes their job so much more difficult. As a TSA person, you know, it's hard to be a piece of cattle walking through those lines for anybody. But it really is important that you do that, be part of that. Because what happens is that allows the TSA to see those that do stand out. It allows them to really do profiling and understanding where are the terrorists. And although they don't advertise this, there are terrorists, there are things going on day in and day out that they don't advertise and say, hey, we caught this terrorist. He was doing this, he was doing that. They really are doing a good job. And so part of doing that is to play cattle for a little while and just get through it and get it done.

Well, that's. See, you're not going to get too much agreement on people that like the tsa. Most of us think they're completely overstepping their bounds. And many people think the terrorism threat is completely overplayed as a way to restrict freedom. But I don't know. I'm not an expert.

Well, there certainly are examples of that. There's examples of that. I've had a couple examples myself where we had to approach TSA agents and tell them they're doing this thing the wrong way and get them out of the system because they just didn't belong there. And you know, what I'm pleading for is just to understand that there is a necessity there. But you're right, I believe that they, if we were to get larger and a bigger picture and philosophical about it, they are far outstepping their bounds. But you have to understand you have the choice not to fly and you have a choice to go buy your own airplane and do it other ways if you want. So that's kind of how the FAA and TSA view this picture is if you're going to fly. What we're talking about here is the safety of the airspace. Not even the traffic thing where, hey, I'm driving a car and I might hurt somebody by crossing the road. We're talking about an airplane that could actually be used as terrorist device so that you know that you can justify both or you can try to justify that. I don't personally feel it's justified, honestly.

Talk about, if you would, some of the more well known airline crashes. And then I want to talk about general aviation, but which means private aviation rather than commercial. But, you know, especially that one. I think it was the flight, and it was maybe four or five years ago, and I think. I think this one is still a mystery. That went down near South America in the ocean, I think was an Air France plane. And I don't know that they've solved that one yet. And then, of course, I think it was TWA Flight 800 taking off from New York. People aren't sure about that one either, or any other ones you want to bring up.

Yeah, we'll go from the most recent backward, but. And that's the Air France accident. That one has the report for that came out. The findings for that just came out in July. And I was very concerned about that report because in it, it talked about how the pilot had made an error. And in fact, he had. But let me just go through what happened in that flight for a second. What happened is that the airplane was flying through the air at high altitude over the ocean, and they lost airspeed indication. There was no airspeed indication in the airplane at all. They didn't know how fast they were going. So the pilot, the co pilot had pulled back on the. On the control yoke. And it's a regular yoke. It's not like a steering wheel, it's a yoke. So they pull that thing, he pulls it back, and they started climbing. And we can't really figure out why he was climbing, but he continued to climb even through their troubleshooting, trying to figure out what was going on. In fact, the stick started shaking on him, telling him that he was climbing and stalling, but he didn't react to that. He seemed to have. Seemed to just keep holding that thing back. So the report basically seems to say that the pilot was inexperienced. Both of the co pilots were in the cockpit. The experienced pilot had stepped out of the cockpit. When he came back in, they all tried to figure out what was going on with this airplane, but when, in fact, they had just been in a really steep angle of attack and had stalled the airplane and they were falling and they fell out. And that's what caused the accident. Now, the challenge there for me is that so what no one asks the question of is why did they lose airspeed? Why did the airspeed indication do what it did? They're blaming it on the pilot for reacting poorly. And I buy that. But that's what we consider the proximate cause. And the proximate cause is what NTSB and FAA and everybody else tries to find. And what that is is the last thing that could have prevented the accident before it happened. So if you think about that for a minute, you think, well, yeah, probably the pilot was the last person that could have prevented the accident. And that's the case in many accidents. So that's why you always hear it was pilot error, it was pilot error, it was pilot error. But what I do in my book is I examine the way that we think about the way we look at accidents, the way we think about the way we think. And the challenge for me is, so what caused the airspeed indicator to fail? So I did some investigating. I found out that there's a thing called a pitot tube, which is a little sharp tube that sticks out in the front of the airplane that gathers information about the wind pressure and the temperature and the density, altitude and all that kind of thing. Well, they had had problems with that, and ultimately they found out that is what caused the airspeed failure was that ice had built up on this tube. Now, it's a heated tube. It shouldn't have built up, but it built up inside where it's not heated, because at that altitude for that long, there's some larger crystals that build up. And they knew about this problem. I asked them, I said, well, why didn't you fix that problem when you knew about it? And they said, well, in the report, it actually states that they knew about this problem and that they had come up with a new model which would prevent this accident, prevent this airspeed indication problem. And I said, well, why then did the easa, which is basically the FAA for Europe, who oversees Air France, why did they not then say, well, all these pitot tubes have to be replaced. This is a critical error, this critical problem. And the FAA was involved in the decision. Air France was involved, Airbus manufacturing was involved. Everybody knew about this thing a year ago, a year before this accident occurred. So I looked deeper into the report and it said, well, we've replaced this tube, so we think this is the right answer for it, but we don't think that it's critical that they have airspeed in the cockpit. So we're not going to mandate that this happen. They'll just replace it in due time. There's no requirement. Now, that doesn't make any sense to me. Why would they not? They know that this thing's going to cause airspeed problems. They know that airspeed without airspeed, you don't know if you're in a climb or if you're in a stall or they have no pitch indication in the cockpit either. So they really don't know what kind of situational attitude the airplane's in. So I would have considered that critical. I think any human being would have considered that critical. So I'd ask myself, I asked them why was this not done? And their position was, well, and this was really going to be the shocker. They said, well, this earth loss of airspeed had happened 12 times before and those airplanes didn't crash.

Oh, my God, that's so scary. That would be the.

Yeah, I mean, that's a flaw in the way we think. That's not. That's not just an oversight. That's not something that's justified or rational.

And pitot tubes are. That's not an expensive thing.

No, no. We're not talking tens of thousands of dollars.

It's reminiscent of the Ford Mustang and the $1 gas tank explosion prevention item that they could have used. And then they just did a statistical analysis and said, hey, if we have to pay this many lawsuits, this many claims from people who die by fire in our car explosions, it's worth it, right?

In my book, I talk a little bit about this phenomenon and I call it an atrophy of vigilance. And the atrophy of vigilance is based on the fact that people make decisions in their lives. And when you make a decision, what you're doing is you're using data like what you just said about the Mustang. The data says this. And the human factor is this, here's how much human life is worth. And we come up with these factors. And so there's people, statisticians and managers and CEOs that look at these numbers and say, okay, we're going to make that decision. What they're not making, what they're not making is a choice. They're not saying, as a human being, does this make sense to me? As a human being, is this something that I want to die knowing that I did or didn't do? And that's a choice, not a decision. You know when you're driving your car and you get a phone call and you decide to pick that up and then you say, hey, I'm going to text this guy back, or whatever, that's not a decision that you made. You didn't do statistical analysis to figure it out. That's a choice you made. And it might just be a choice to kill yourself or kill someone else's child who's crossing the street in front of you. So I speak a lot about that in the book and there's plenty of examples of it.

Okay, just quickly, on the TWA flight 800, wasn't there a black box cockpit recording of the pilot saying some sort of Islamic prayer or something? You know, and then there was thought that maybe it was shot down by a missile. And what happened with that flight?

Well, I don't know about that Islamic prayer. I hadn't heard that before. But in my book, I go into fairly good detail about a friend of mine, Norm, we Meyer. And Norm was working for the National Transportation Safety Board at the time. And he came back to me very, very upset on that accident. I was not involved in that investigation, but he was. He was very into that investigation. And what he told me is, and what's it written in the book is that, you know, he was interviewing some folks. And it just so happened one of the person, one of the people he was interviewing was in the military with, with Norm, and he knew the guy. And so they were talking and they were talking about what he had seen. And he did say that he had seen what he. What he thought was some kind of a missile heading up towards the airplane before the accident occurred. Now, Norm was taken after that. Information was starting to spread within the investigation group. There Norm was. His notebook was taken from him by the FBI. All of his information was taken from him. And he was told that he cannot perform any interviews with anybody unless the FBI is present. Or they couldn't perform any more interviews actually at that time. And they took all the NTSB investigators and the FAA investigators off of it, and the FBI and I suppose the CIA or NSA took over from there. Now, ultimately, he complained and complained because the NTSB doesn't answer to anybody but the President of the United States. So they complained and complained. Eventually they came back and said, okay, you can do interviews, but you can't take a pen and paper in there and you can't use a recording device. So that, to me, that sounds like there's something really fishy going on there. And it just didn't make a lot of sense to me the way that that whole thing went. And I express that in the book. I go into great detail about that.

Hey, we'll be back with you in just a moment. Take a listen to this.

Have you listened to the Creating wealth series? I mean, from the beginning? If not, you can go ahead and get book one that shows 1 through 20 in digital download. These are advanced strategies for wealth creation. For more information, go to jasonhartman.com.

General aviation. Let's kind of close with that topic. When it comes to small planes, I'M sure many of our listeners are pilots. I was taking flying lessons for a while, and. And I'll tell you, my mom, when I. When I just finished my ground school and was about to move forward, I had about, I don't know, 40, 35 hours under my belt. I think you need 45 to do your. Your basic pilot license. And my mom talked me out of it. And this was pretty, pretty smart, what she said. She says, jason, you know, you are far too busy to actually fly often enough to be good at this right now, at this point in your life. Why don't you just wait till later when you can fly every week and you're not so busy with your career? And that was great advice. I mean, I couldn't have agreed with mom more. I certainly disagreed with her enough over the years, but I, you know, I thought that was very good advice. Right.

Well, yeah, I. That's really good advice that she gave you, especially for particular people. I have add. I'm just going everywhere all the time, and I tried to be a pilot, and I had a bad incident, which, again, I talk about in the book, where I realized, look, I'm going to hurt myself or hurt somebody if I continue trying to fly airplanes for people because my mind is just not designed to be that meticulous about specifics. So it was kind of an interesting. At least in the cockpit, for sure.

It's sort of amazing that you, of all people, aren't a pilot. We think that's.

You know, I love to fly, and our company has an airplane, and I get to fly quite a lot, but I always have a professionally trained pilot sitting next to me, helping me make sure I don't make any mistakes, you know, but. And that's. That's the level of safety that I fly at.

Well, yeah, I mean, we've only got a few minutes left here, but. But what are some of the problems in general aviation? I mean, far, far less safe than commercial, I would, you know, assume by any statistical way of counting it. But what are some of the big pitfalls there?

Well, at a tactical level, I think the biggest problem is that with the economy the way it is, and people who own our own airplanes typically don't fly as much as they used to. Either they're busy with whatever else they're doing, trying to make ends meet, or that they just don't fly as much because of the expensive fuel and maintenance and that. So the challenge I see in general aviation that faces us most right now is, is that of currency being current in the airplane and flying it and making sure that you have enough hours underneath there that you feel comfortable in that airplane. Because like anything, it's not like a bicycle. You can't just not fly for a couple years and jump back into it. And I think that most of the accidents in general aviation that we've seen recently, the pilots have less hours than we've seen in the past. So that, I think is very, very concerning.

You know, I always heard when I was taking flying lessons that 200 hours was sort of that magic number when your insurance drops and you're a lot more likely to be a Safe pilot after 200 hours. Is that. Is that still the number 200?

Yeah. Yeah, I think so. And certainly after you've got your original amount of hours underneath you, you have to fly at least 100 hours a year, you know, in general aviation now, if you're flying in the mountains, you're flying in other areas you're not familiar, then that's not going to be sufficient either. You need to get out and fly more and challenge your skills in various areas. So that's something that's a great concern. But a bigger concern of mine is kind of going back to this idea of atrophy, of vigilance, is that the idea that you can have a checklist. We all look at checklists as pilots. You have to make sure we didn't miss something. So we stick to the checklist. It creates a mindset within your mind in which you stop looking at other threats and other hazards, things that are anomalous. You haven't seen something before, so your mind, since it's used to this checklist, is looking for the checklist for how to respond to that. So you see some icing on your wing that you haven't really noticed that before. I didn't know what kind of icing that was. So you feel like you're safe to continue, because your mind will trick you into thinking, oh, that's just ice, and I know that I have de icing equipment, so I turn my de icing equipment on, and then everything's good. And you don't follow up and check to see if it worked. And you don't look for another place to land. You just simply keep going forward. And that's exactly what happened up in New York, in Buffalo with Colgan Air, when the pilot had not had enough time or familiarization with icing, looked out at her wing and said, look, there's some ice there. I'm not sure what that is, but she Went ahead and tried de icing instead of anti icing after the fact and it didn't work. And that's what ended up making that airplane crash. So the fear I have, the concern I have now mostly for general aviation is this kind of pre programmed or checklist mentality of thinking. If I do all this checklist right, I don't have to look for any other risks or hazards.

Right, right. It's again, it's a complacency issue. Anything else? And any other quick tips for general aviation?

Just be aware of your environment. That's the biggest issue with, with me is you fly in the same place. If you're flying out of Phoenix, you're flying out of California or flying out of wherever you are, you think that that's what flying is. I live in Colorado, up here near Vail.

Changes quite dramatically in the mountains and the weather.

Absolutely, absolutely. And understand your own familiarization, understand your own skill set and don't try to carry those skill sets into other environments.

Here's one question for you. There seems to be in the last 10 years a lot of variety in advancement in general aviation. You know, of course the glass cockpit has been a major revolution. But in addition to that, a lot of new planes in the works that are really interesting. Planes that are convertible to cars, that are towable on cars where the wings fold in. Just really some really cool stuff. I think Samson Industries has one that they're working on. Cirrus was the first one I think to do the Paris Parachute.

Right.

There's just some interesting stuff. The very light jet category, the sport pilot license or recreational pilot license, which is like 25 hours. That one's a little scary to me.

Right.

Because I don't. 45 seems pretty low. But you know, those are I guess all two seater planes by the way, so you can't do as much with them. But you know, any, any thoughts on the new products, the new licensing, anything like that?

Well, I think it's exciting to this. This time right now is exciting. There are new airplanes coming out. There's the vlj, the very light Jet. Cate is something I think is really exciting. And I know Honda Jet is coming out with one soon and a few others as well. So I'm really excited about that category. What I am concerned about is the level of automation in the cockpit. And we deal with this in the commercial world and now we're having to deal with it a little bit in the general aviation world as well. And that's that I believe that these Automated cockpits that they have, you know, where the oil pressure indicator, if you have low oil pressure, you don't see anything on your glass cockpit until that oil pressure is low and then it pops up in front of your face. So it's kind of automated. It kind of tells you what to look at.

In other words, judging from the reliability of my own computer, I really worry about that.

Exactly. Exactly. Good point. But what I worry about more too is the mentality. Again, I'm going back to this idea that you rely on that computer so much that you stop thinking, you stop thinking about things. And I'm worried that the automatic cockpit is creating an automatic pilot where we're not really thinking. We're just reacting to what it is that the computer is telling us to react to. So I'm a little concerned about that. But as far as the availability of flying and be able to go out and people don't know much about this sport pilot license, but it's something anybody can get and it's cheap to get and the airplanes that you fly are cheap. If you really like to fly and you thought you always wanted to fly, it's a great opportunity for you to do it. You don't have to do as extensive medical exam. You don't have to have a medical even to do it. You can be a sport pilot. And it's very exciting that that's available. I just wish that the FAA and everyone would make people more aware of it.

Yeah, good stuff. Well, hey, give out your website, Dave, and tell people where they can learn more and buy the book.

Okay, great. It's just www.whyplanescrash.com or a better site to go would just be go to the Amazon and when you order the book, there's a lot of information about lectures I might be giving around the country and, and what's going on there. And I'm doing lectures about thinking now. I started. My next book is already on its way. It's called Dare to repair your thinking. And it really has more to do with the way we think about risks and threats and hazards and how we process those. It doesn't have a whole lot about aviation, but it does have to do with how we think and how we defend ourselves against threats that we may not see.

Good stuff. Well, when your new book comes out, give us a call and let's have you back on the show to talk about how we think and how we assess risk. That'll be a great topic. Thank you so much, David. Appreciate you joining us.

All right, thank you so much. Have a good day.

Thank you for joining us today for the Holistic Survival show protecting the people, places and profits you care about in uncertain times. Be sure to listen to our Creating wealth show, which focuses on exploiting the fundamentals, financial and wealth creation opportunities in today's economy. Learn more at www.jasonhartman.com or search Jason Hartman on itunes. This show is produced by the Hartman Media Company, offering very general guidelines and information. Opinions of guests are their own and none of the content should be considered individual advice. If you require personalized advice, please consult an appropriate professional information deemed reliable but not guaranteed.