Just Another Emergency Procedure
Fly the damn aircraft. The instructor who said that to me was a crusty Vietnam veteran helicopter pilot with tens of thousands of hours in the airframe. He shared that despite all the homework, planning, and analysis, as a pilot, you will be thrust into situations where you need to manage the aircraft’s profile and keep the passengers on board safe. Nothing else matters.
In late 1989, I began my 12-month rotary-wing flight school journey as a newly commissioned lieutenant in the U.S. Army. Our days were spent in the classroom and aircraft, and over that period, we progressed from day to night, as well as instrument and low-terrain flights. In between these phases of instruction, we were required to complete check rides, during which you are tested on flight maneuvers, aircraft classroom information, and related topics.
While reading Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow, I began to view my flight school and aviation experience through the lens of agents System 1 and System 2. When operating an aircraft, there are times when you make automatic and quick inputs based on a series of inputs, actions, and reactions. System 1 operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort, and generates a limited set of basic assessments.[1] Additionally, flying the aircraft requires detailed mental focus, such as measuring the rate of ascent and descent, monitoring airspeed and fuel burn rates, and interacting with other aircraft and control towers over the radios. System 2 allocates attention to the effortful mental activities that demand it, including complex computations.[2]
Despite differences in terrain, weather, or time of day, each check ride has consistent criteria. You will analyze the weather, file a flight plan, and answer questions about aircraft limits and related information. During the actual flight, you will be required to conduct maneuvers to test your piloting abilities while being randomly tested on emergency procedures (EP’s). Those are the wild cards. The “gotchas.”
During my night check ride, I did well in the initial planning phases and the table talk reviewing aircraft limitations. It was a gorgeous, clear evening as we walked the airfield and transitioned to the flying segment. After taking off, we had flown about ten minutes toward our training area when the evaluator began asking questions. I felt comfortable flying straight and level as we transitioned between waypoint lights on the ground.
I successfully answered emergency procedure questions with automatic and quick responses. As students, we used many acronyms to assist. I thought we were complete with that portion when he asked another question. “What procedure do you follow for an engine fire?”
Associating with System 1, this was an easy and automatic answer we studied frequently. The only difference this time was that the evaluator moved switches like we were having a real engine fire. I glanced at him and said the last command, “Turn the battery switch to the off position.” He casually reached above us to the center console and toggled the switch to the off position. Neither one of my system agents was prepared for what happened next.
Gotcha.
Sunk is gone
Over the years, I have been fascinated with the behaviors surrounding risk assessment and investments. Kahneman also analyzes the decision-making process or choices surrounding economics and their rationality. For the past 15 years, our family has had season tickets to the Portland Timbers, the local football club. We had an annual contractual agreement with the club, and the payments were made over six months during the middle of the season. A few matches were scheduled during the weeknights, which were more burdensome to attend. After a long day at work, my wife and I would discuss whether we should go to the match, and sometimes it would become a moderate debate.
In his book, Kahneman describes this as the Sunk Cost Fallacy. Regardless of whether we attended the match, we were already afflicted by the sunk costs of the season tickets and were throwing good money after bad.[3] Essentially, we poured additional funds into something we had already paid for. From my standpoint, we had already paid for the tickets. From an economic perspective, we would incur additional expenses with time, gas, parking, and potential concessions at the match. For myself, the Econ living in the land of theory, I viewed this as a discrete project where the money was already gone. For my wife, the Human acting in the real-world moment,[4] there was more of an experiential tie to the event and a sense of losing out from not attending. After poor team performances, we often asked ourselves why we bothered to participate, spend the additional money, and waste the evening. We discovered that we were enriched by the time spent together, and it wasn’t driven by attending the matches. This year, the Econ decided not to renew our season tickets and instead reallocated the money to pursue a doctorate.
“Turn the battery back on!”
I screamed at the top of my lungs to compensate for the engine’s noise. Everything around me had turned black to match the night sky surrounding us. System 1 barked out instinctively and considered reversing the sequence as an option, or maybe it was just the quick-fix mentality seeking immediate relief.[5] Based on the reading, I am not even sure that System 2 existed at that moment. My heart was racing, and all I could envision was the aircraft at 1200 feet buzzing through the sky with no external or internal lights. The aircraft instrumentation was dark, and we had zero communication with no power. Beyond the engine’s roar, I could hear the rotors cutting into the air above us. I could see his arm casually reaching up to toggle the battery switch back on out of the corner of my eye. Instantly, the cockpit lit up, and we could talk over the microphones again.
Over an hour later, we concluded the flight, and on the way back to the hangar, the evaluator congratulated me on a job well done. I passed and was on to the next phase.
[1] Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow, (New York, NY: Farrar, Strous, and Giroux, 2013), 20.
[2] Kahneman, 21.
[3] Kahneman, 345.
[4] Kahneman, 408.
[5] Edwin H. Friedman, A Failure of Nerve, Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix, (New York, NY. Church Publishing, Inc. 2007), 54.
About the Author
Michael Hansen
4 responses to “Just Another Emergency Procedure”
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Wow Michael. I have often sneaked a look at the pilots little cabin and seen the many lights and buttons. It fills me with dread that you pilots would not be able to remember through a very well practiced and now intuitive System 1 that feels confident and instinctive about how to save our lives mid air. I am also grateful when the clouds do things that we passengers feel less relaxed, and your System 2 can collaborate with another pilot and make some good reflective decisions.
I think as a leader I feel like I spend most of my life flying as a pilot of my organisations but i like to think that Jesus is my co-pilot- otherwise I fear I may use a parachute and slowly glide down to earth to retire to an island somewhere to avoid the terror of the role. Sometimes the storms are just exhausting and neither System 1 or 2 want to operate and an exit seems more preferable. Do people in your work sector speak about this? Or does it not happen there?
Betsy,
We were young (green) and inexperienced in the aircraft during that training phase. When you reference the expert hitting the 10,000-hour rule, we only have 180 hours in the airframe when they pin on wings and send you off to your first unit. The evaluator in the other seat is the expert. As I thought through the relationship between System 1 and 2 as a pilot, it’s very fluid. There are moments when you are straight, level, relaxed, and able to assess situations more broadly. In emergency situations, that becomes narrower.
I would share that hope can sometimes seem futile, and escape or a change of scenery might be the best option. Amidst all the directed changes and turmoil in the workplace, I had one of my managers depart in the past 2 weeks. It didn’t come to my decision-making or leadership but instead external events and market forces. As a leader, I felt I had failed, but for him, it might have been the best alternative for a different set of circumstances. It is still a very humbling experience to lose a contributing leader in the company.
Michael,
Thank you for sharing a story from a world that I will never have the privilege of experiencing. I’m sure that I would not do well in those kinds of situations, but I’m thankful for people like you who can.
It seems that there may be many situations in which the Sunk Cost Fallacy drives decisions in the workplace and equally so inside the church. What are your thoughts on how we can help the people we lead be okay with walking away from a sunk cost?
Darren,
I was a novice compared to many experts, with over 10k+ hours in multiple airframes. While their methods might be a bit crude, they served a point and expanded my look at operating an aircraft. They taught many of us to broaden our view and handle more in System 1 due to working scenarios through System 2. Much of this was about learning and experiencing, and they would introduce more sophisticated and elaborate situations to get you there.
Sunk costs can be a tricky subject. How does someone feel about managing money or investments? I have walked different teams (for-profit and non-profit entities) down similar discussions because the fundamentals are the same. You can have a new product, building/expansion, or something entirely new and different. Referencing the reading from Poole, there are individuals whose critical skills aren’t with the Math(s), which is ok. That might lead to a different discussion. However, I have been involved with individuals close to the project, which can be unhealthy.
An example would be a person’s relationship with their automobile. They could be “tied” to the vehicle for various reasons. For example, how they feel driving it, how it rides, the gas mileage, etc. Also, they might have just invested money into a repair – so what is more repair money? The first repair is sunk. They are mutually exclusive events. Why invest more money into a car when you wouldn’t necessarily see a return on it and recoup your investment? It might deal with overall cash flow. However, it becomes critical when you have funds to utilize or a fixed number of projects to invest in as a business. It erodes value over time.