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flickr/ Madison Guy

I still clearly remember when the jig was up with my fingernail clippers.

I had been flying with the clippers in my shaving kit for several weeks after 9/11, but I couldn’t slip them by one very alert security screener in Jackson, Mississippi. At first I thought he was kidding me, but he was in deadly earnest. He explained that the small pointed file would have to be broken off the clippers before they would be allowed to pass through. I resisted the urge to point out that — as the pilot of the airplane — I already have a very sharp crash axe within easy reach when I sit in the cockpit (I had already heard of some pilots getting in hot water for making such observations).

The screener held out the clippers as if to hand them to me, and I asked what he was doing. He said, “You need to break off the file.” My response: “I’m not touching that thing. You’ve just identified it as a serious potential weapon and I don’t want to risk an injury.” This was my subtle way of highlighting the absurdity of the situation (best I could do on short notice). The screener broke off the file and I continued my day.

Over the past decade, I’ve become inured to the theater-of-the-absurd that is our screening process, and I’ve come to accept the dangers inherent in shoes and liquids (but only for amounts over 3.5 fluid ounces). But now, apparently, knives of a certain size are safe for flight. This strikes me as odd. Couldn’t any small knife be wielded with just as much menace as the box cutters from the hijackings of 9/11?

It seems like an odd place to ease up the scrutiny, and it appears to me that the TSA is focusing on those things which could potentially bring down the plane, i.e. explosives. Pilots are trained to never open the cockpit door in a threat situation, so small knives don’t pose a threat to the plane, just to the flight attendants and passengers.

But pilots and flight attendants are concerned with this new rule. The safety of the people on our flight is our main concern, and the new policy does not enhance that safety. The stated reason for the change is to speed up the screening process, but I can’t imagine the small time savings is worth the added risk.

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Over the past couple of weeks I’ve had the chance to talk with other pilots about the tragic Air France accident that occurred on June 1, 2009. These discussions were prompted by the recent release of the final accident report and the transcript of conservations in the cockpit.

In the initial aftermath of the crash, there was a lot of speculation that the plane had broken up in flight after encountering a severe thunderstorm over the Atlantic Ocean. The in-flight break-up, so the conventional wisdom went, resulted from the pitot-static system icing up, thereby giving erroneous information to the pilots who inadvertently over-stressed the airframe.

It was nearly two years later, in April 2011, that the main debris field was located. The pattern of debris suggested that the plane had been intact upon impact with the ocean. Incredibly, the Flight Data Recorder (FDR) was located, followed by the discovery of the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) a week later. With the information provided by these “black boxes,” the story of what happened becomes much clearer.

The Air France 447 Cockpit Voice Recorder, found on the ocean floor (Photo: BEA)

A few things about this accident jump out at me when I read the transcript. There never seems to be any clear understanding between the two First Officers as to who is actually flying the plane. The more junior FO is the designated “flying pilot” at this point, while the Captain is on his rest break, but the other, more senior, FO makes control inputs at some points. Basic crew resource management requires that one pilot be flying at any given time and that the division of duties is always made clear (e.g. “You have the airplane”, “I have the airplane”).

Here’s the part that I believe was a major contributor to the accident. On the Airbus, when one pilot makes a control input (e.g. pulling back on the sidestick), the other pilot has no indication of this control movement. Compare this to more traditional aircraft, which have control yokes in front of both pilots. On these planes, when one pilot moves the yoke, the other pilot’s yoke moves in tandem. If I hold full back stick, this is glaringly obvious to the other pilot. Apparently this is not so on an Airbus. In addition, when both pilots move their respective control sticks, the inputs are averaged. So, when the senior FO made an attempt to lower the nose of the plane, his efforts were stymied by the junior FO who was holding back stick throughout the descent.

Though all of these things were major contributors to this accident, the root problem seems to be a lack of basic airmanship. The initial response by the junior FO to the loss of airspeed information (initiating a climb) was not something an experienced pilot should ever do, particularly when already at a safe altitude. But this initial mistake was still very recoverable. All that was needed was to lower the nose to regain airspeed and fly out of trouble. Instead, he compounded the problem by continuing to hold back pressure throughout the descent, causing a perfectly good plane to stall all the way to impact.

Like every other pilot, I’d like to think that I wouldn’t have made these mistakes. But I wasn’t there, so I don’t know how the confusion of the situation would have affected me, and I hate being the Monday-morning quarterback. I am glad that the black boxes were recovered so we don’t have to wonder about some mysterious gremlin that might pop up unexpectedly on some other flight. Somehow, it’s reassuring to me to know that the cause was more mundane, and eminently avoidable.