Making Seconds Come First

There are 86,400 seconds in a day. In just one second, a honeybee flaps its wings 200 times and approximately 79 stars will vanish from space. What seems to go by so quickly can often be the most profound part of our day, week, year, and even lives. We find this most painfully true when we're talking about accidents and times when lives were lost due to mere seconds of mistakes.

On 26 July 2021, a Challenger 605 crashed on approach near Truckee-Tahoe Airport with two pilots, four passengers, and two dogs on board. The National Transportation Safety Board recently released their docket on the crash, including the cockpit voice recorder which details the interactions between a clearly more experienced Second-in-Command (SIC) pilot very diplomatically trying to assist the Pilot-in-Command (PIC) throughout the flight and most importantly, during those last few seconds of the flight. In an eerie foreshadowing, the SIC recognizes the approach isn't going as well as it should and announces one minute before impact "we don't wanna be on the news." He offers to take the controls but only becomes forceful with the request about ten seconds before the fatal crash—which sadly wasn't enough time to gain control and avoid the catastrophe.

It leads us to consider when it is appropriate for a more experienced pilot to take over the flight and how much leeway do you give to those pilots still trying to learn. Many instructor pilots face this decision every day, though their role is generally one more pronounced in seniority and expertise and they are usually flying with a timid pilot who is quite willing to relinquish control at the first request. But, with two established pilots, this dynamic can be more complex and filled with uncertainty when experience combines with ego and we may be hesitant to challenge our peers. While a flight deck might contain two pilots with similarly extensive flight time, they may vastly differ in judgement and skill.

As pilots, we tend to accept that we will learn from mistakes and, therefore, often allow our copilots to make errors within what we hope will be a safe window to practice. However, knowing that every second counts, we must place more thought in determining how far we let errors go as they can compound quickly and fatally as we saw in the Truckee accident and so many others before.

Because tension and stress often plague the aviation community, a calm demeanor and positive outlook are certainly a bonus on the flight deck, making balancing easy communication with assertive language a difficult skill to master. In this case, the SIC could possibly have saved the flight had he intervened sooner. Or perhaps, the PIC could have conceded the approach to his SIC knowing that he lacked the awareness or skill at that particular point in time.

The fact that every second is critical can often be lost in the larger course of our days. Where precision matters, perhaps we should all do a better job of considering how our actions can contribute to a safe operating environment and start defining how wide a margin of error we are willing to accept from ourselves and others. Put every second first.