28 SEPTEMBER 2019 ÇPlane&Pilot
N
ot long after I moved to the rural area where I
now reside, an experienced pilot who lived just
down the road from me departed from our local
airport in his single-engine airplane with his 9-year-old
daughter on board. The marine layer that visits the
airport almost daily at that time of the year had yet
to dissipate, and the experienced but non-instrument
rated pilot must have been in a hurry, taking off in
zero visibility. The flight lasted no more than a couple
of minutes because shortly after he departed, he, his
young passenger and the crinkled airplane were found
in the nearby riverbed.
Neither the knowledge of that accident nor my hav-
ing attended the emotional funeral kept me from taking
flying lessons a couple of years later and eventually
receiving my own ticket. During one of my flying les-
sons, I was talking about that particular accident with
my instructor, a grizzled misanthrope
named Floyd who had been flying, he
told me proudly, before the invention
of steam gauges. Floyd revealed that
he had been sitting in the local FBO
the morning of the accident, and the
pilot—who was well-known at the air-
port—had come in to chat with a few
of the other pilots who were hanging
around waiting for fog to dissipate. My
neighbor told the pilots he was about
to take off, and soon after he left, the remaining pilots
in the FBO placed bets on whether he would make
it. Floyd told me, with a sheepish grin, that he had
won the bet.
Naively, I asked Floyd if anyone attempted to stop
him. Floyd paused for a moment, looked at me quiz-
zically, and said, “Of course not.”
I understood how pilots did risky and even stupid
things, because pilots also happen to be humans. But
I had a harder time understanding the tendency to sit
by and do or say nothing when witnessing someone
about to do something potentially harmful not just to
themselves but also to a vulnerable child.
I imagine that, in all likelihood, I may well have said
nothing in the same circumstance. Yet it bothered me
enough that I continue to struggle with it today, nowsome 15 years later. Fortunately, there have been a slew
of researchers who have been trying to understand the
phenomenon they have come to call the “bystander
effect.” Stated simply, the bystander effect occurs when
a person becomes less likely to intervene in a danger-
ous situation when in the company of others. The
original research was sparked by the murder of Kitty
Genovese in New York, in which dozens of people were
alleged to have heard her cries for help and did nothing.
After many years of diligent sleuthing, it turned out
that, in fact, there had been many calls to the police,
but the newspapers mistakenly reported otherwise,
and the story caught on. Despite the inaccuracies of
the news reports, the years of research that followed
illuminated some interesting patterns.
When around others, people often experience a
diffusion of responsibility. Each person might expect
the other to intervene, so any one person is less likely
to do so. Also, influenced by those around them, people
look to their social group to determine the norms of
behavior. If nobody intervenes, then that becomes
the expectation.
My own impression of my fellow pilots is that we
tend to be fairly rugged individualists. Most of us don’t
like to be told what to do or how to do it. It’s a form of
machismo, which is an understandable and maybe
even necessary ingredient in being
able to take the risks we do by simply
stepping into a cockpit and opening
the throttle. Confident in ourselves and
our decision-making, we expect not to
be interfered with or confronted. As
members of the club, we’ll grant other
pilots the same respect and dignity in
return and not question their deci-
sions. This, I believe, is embedded in
aviation culture and lends itself to not
confronting others when we see that they are about
to do something that places them and potentially
others at risk.
Certainly, whether we speak up or not depends on
how risky we believe the situation might be. In the case
of taking off in zero visibility, most pilots will agree that
it’s a fairly simple thing to do, though one should never
attempt to do so without being instrument rated and
current. Just fix your eyes on the gauges and respond
accordingly. But the problem, of course, is that each
time we do something dangerous that works out fine,
the behavior is reinforced, making it more likely that
we’ll do it again. Every time we talk on the cellphone
while driving a car and don’t get into an accident broad-
ens the illusion that it’s safe, so why not do it again?
If you believe that having a pilot certificate carriesNot Speaking Up
Failing to say something when a
fellow pilot is about to do something
risky seems crazy, but it’s actually
a well-known phenomenon.❯ ❯ “My own impression
of my fellow pilots is
that we tend to be fairly
rugged individualists.
Most of us don’t like to be
told what to do or how to
do it.”HUMAN FACTOR
By Ira Heilveil, Ph.D.