Watching Air Crash Investigator-type programs - useful or best avoided?



When I ran the Ansett fear of flying program in Melbourne, I instigated a tour of the hangar facilities. This would usually happen on the fourth of five consecutive sessions - about a week before the course's graduation flight.

In the past, that fourth session was principally about cognitive-based interventions - challenging automatic but maladaptive assumptions based on new accurate information delivered during weeks 1 and 2 of the course. It also included another tour of an aircraft, but this time the doors were closed and we were towed to the maintenance hangar.

Each night several aircraft received overnight maintenance and so there were no shortage of opportunities for this towing adventure. Usually the young blokes would want to ride in the flight deck with the engineer in charge, known as a LAME. At times, I would organise some of my private clients to meet me at the airport and also do the taxi and hangar tour.

We instituted a brief tour of maintenance so that course participants could so the high level of checks and cross-checks when working on an aircraft which might be in bits and pieces.

I always waited until the penultimate session to do this tour, because I formed the belief that to do it earlier would prove overwhelming - too many things to go wrong would be their thinking in the first two sessions. They had little knowledge base in which to place the vision of an aircraft and its parts. Later in the program their knowledge base would have expanded and so the trip to the hangar was reinforcing of the inherent safety systems employed by commercial airlines.

They also had a chance to ask whatever questions of the LAMEs and get accurate, expert replies to again reinforce the safety message.

With the introduction of LOST, the TV series about the survivors of an airplane crash, the documentary series Air Crash Investigator is being played on free to air TV. I am very familiar with all the investigations portrayed in the series. Tonight, I'm watching the episode about American Airlines AA965, a flight from Miami to Cali, Colombia.

I have an attachment to this hull loss, having spent time with some of the American Airlines staff who counselled AA staff and passenger families. I also learnt some interesting tidbits of information about the rescue efforts and their being hindered by the rough terrain where the plane flew into terrain, as well as the drug lords who roamed in the vicinity. Indeed a local war had seen an important navigation device knocked out, which was one of many contributing factors.

When I was working with Ansett's Disaster Management Planning Unit, I invoked the American Airlines incident near Cali to recommend some important additions to their plans the Ansett directors had not known about.

I can calmly sit and watch such programs knowing much about what happens next, but intrigued to see how the producers will portray the facts. I don't become scared of flying as a result, since I know the rarity of the events portrayed and how so many things must go consecutively wrong - caused by human or mechanical error - for disaster to strike.

I can absorb the material because it reinforces the safety systems that make commercial aviation as safe as it is, despite the portrayal of loss of life.

But - if you are a fearful flyer with small disconnected pieces of knowledge, shows like this are likely to reinforce your sense of danger - exactly the opposite of my situation.

So my advice is - don't watch these programs, not matter how fascinated you may be, morbid or otherwise. Same goes for newspaper and other media stories - most of the time they report factoids and opinion and assumption. Any investigation itself may well take over a year to produce definitive answers.

Posted: Wed - April 27, 2005 at 09:58 PM         |

©