Cultural Crashes

I was recently asked to read a chapter “The Ethnic Theory of Plane Crashes” of the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell.

Being an avid fan of Air Crash Investigation on National Geographic I really didn’t mind reading this one section even though I have never read a book from the 7th Chapter, I hadn’t heard of the book before, didn’t have a clue what it was about and have not read any other works by the author.

Wow, I will never look at plane crashes the same way again. So many of us assume that the reasons planes crash are because they were defective and eventually malfunctioned. Not so, many plane crashes happen because of lack of effective communication, lack of assertiveness and lack of teamwork. Gladwell also makes a connection between lack of assertiveness and culture. Let me try and explain this by using my own culture as an example. Growing up, we are taught to respect our elders. We do as we are told, we don’t question even though we may think that the request/order is unfair or off the mark, we don’t sit in grown-up discussions, some even refer to their older siblings as “boeta” or “tietie” as a sign of respect. You call every older person Aunty…. or Uncle…..even if they are not your relatives, never by their first name. It is also disrespectful to say “You” to someone older or to a parent e.g. “Can you pick me up at my friend’s house” you should rather say “Can mommy pick me up at my friend’s house” and so forth, I’m sure you get the idea. So as a Muslim youth one tends to grow up placing a high level of respect on grown-ups and seniors and would follow orders whether we agree with the order or not, rather than speaking up to give our own views and opinions and thereby “disrespecting” the older persons request. I'm not saying other cultures have lower levels of respect for older persons, I really cannot speak for other cultures but I know all to well that the respect for the elderly and learned is expected from all Muslims and is taught to us from childhood.

Coming back to the book, Gladwell makes the connection between culture and the level of assertiveness and the respect between pilot and co-pilot causing bad communication in the cockpit which ultimately could lead to a flight going horribly wrong and sadly a plane crash. What caused the Korean crash as described in the book was the co-pilot's politeness and respect for his superior resulting in him being too afraid to tell the captain that they were doomed. The co-pilot could have saved the flight had he not been afraid to speak up. In the book Gladwell concludes that communication hierarchies in the Korean culture led to an exceedingly high number of fatal plane crashes by Korean Airlines in the 1990s. I’m not going to give away too much of that chapter of the book but I will say that I think the author’s synopsis, although somewhat controversial does make sense to me especially after watching so many episodes of air crash investigation.

The message the chapter conveys in a nutshell is that “Plane crashes are much more likely to be the result of an accumulation of minor difficulties and seemingly trivial malfunctions” like bad weather, the plane running late, pilot fatigue, and pilots who “have never flown together, so they’re not comfortable with each other” as well as consecutive human errors.

What I learnt from the book is that so many of my actions are not always of my honest picking but often stem directly from my background, culture and the society that shaped me into the person that I am. I have also learnt that sometimes in order to get anywhere in life one has to lose a bit of “respect” in order to gain some :)

ps. doesn't it make you wonder was caused all the SA Airlink incidents of late...Mmmmmm

Confidence comes not from always being right
but from not fearing to be wrong.
~Peter T. Mcintyre