Thankyou Anna,
Now that we have clarified things it is possible to concentrate on the ways
in which CHAT might better inform aviation safety!!
What the Russian authorities are now saying about their standard practices
raises some interesting questions.
The pilot of the Tupolev was placed in an intense position of cognitive
dissonance. He KNEW that there was conflicting traffic (because his TCAS had
been activated), and he had two simultaneous and directly opposed
instructions to process. One can imagine the captain and first officer
looking at each other and communicating horror primarily through facial
expressions. The missing of the first message is not necessarily
significant - there are many things to do on a flight deck, and sometimes
the radio message comes at precisely the wrong moment in a work sequence.
It is at the second message that the contradictory instructions occur. The
tone of voice of the Swiss ATC officer will be of interest when the voice
recorders are analysed. There are many different ways to say 'descend to
flight level 33 immediately'. Did he convey 'crisis' in his voice tone? The
TCAS activation does tell of crisis - but not necessarily fatal crisis. TCAS
activations are not that uncommon. They are set to give early warning
rather than late. This is, itself, an interesting question in the field of
tool mediation. If you set a crisis alert tool to go off early in the
development of a crisis, do you thereby devalue its alerting effect?
I speculate that it is at this point of two messages that the
cultural-historical context became critical. An IMMEDIATE decision is
required - almost a reflex. What the Russian pilots are telling us -
regardless of what the Russian authorities say - is that their cultural
assumption is that the level and direction of the aircraft is CONTROLLED BY
THE ATC CONTROLLER. That is where they default to when confronted by a
dilemma. This is the opposite of most other nationalities. When I was
trained as a pilot I was trained into the assumption that THE PILOT CONTROLS
THE FLIGHT and that ATC 'instructions' are, in the end, advisory. I have
flown planes into Russian airports, and this is the first time that I have
known that Russian pilots tend to have this view of ATC.
The classic illustration of this is what happens when an airliner finds that
it is in an unstable layer of air and the passengers are being bounced.
American pilots immediately start negotiating for a level change with ATC.
But when western airliners crossing Russia (for example Tokyo to London
flights) try to do the same thing with Russian ATC, conflict often follows.
Hence western ATC officers tend to regard Russian pilots as very good and
very biddable, but non Russian pilots flying across Russia are inclined to
view Russian ATC as excessively overbearing and authoritarian. For many
aviation professionals taking part in the current discussions this is the
first time they have come to understand why these culturally situated
perceptions exist.
Stepping back from the tragedy itself, what is interesting here is what a
wonderful illustration of Activity Theory this all is. First there is the
disturbance of the disaster, then there is the period of reflection leading
to the visibilisation of some fundamental contradictions. But alongside this
there are the negatively mediating factors of the media and swirling
political interests that tend to get in the way of the potential for
expansive learning that is being created within the professional community.
The thing to watch for is whether the procedural changes will emerge from
the discussions of the professionals, or the political dances of the
countries and organisations.
Just to be extra clear, Anna, there are many similar culturally situated
procedural differences in aviation operations. Most of the research effort
has been focused on interactions between Asian and western cultures. In this
case one came out and bit us that nobody had ever really noticed.
Also - none of the foregoing says anything one way or another about the
performance of Swiss ATC. that doesn't mean that I don't think that to be
important. I do. I think that it is central to the whole affair. But in
posting messages here I am just concentrating on that aspect of the event
that is especially instructive in a CHAT context.
Phillip Capper,
Centre for Research on Work, Education and Business Ltd. (WEB Research),
Level 13
114 The Terrace
(PO Box 2855)
WELLINGTON
New Zealand
Ph: +64 4 499 8140
Fx: +64 4 499 8395
Mb: +64 021 519 741
-----Original Message-----
From: Stetsenko, Anna [mailto:AStetsenko@gc.cuny.edu]
Sent: Thursday, 11 July 2002 3:27 p.m.
To: 'xmca@weber.ucsd.edu '
Subject: RE: novelty and stereotypes: re collision
and of course, by no means did I mean to understate how important it is to
look into the pilots' practices and experiences (particular following
accidents) to reveal possible discrepancies (but not just western-russian
ones, they really cross boundaries and exist even within countries as you
wrote later, perhaps also on collision warning systems? see, had you said
it this way right from the beginning -- about discrepancies between and
within countries, and not as between "pilots trained in Russia" versus "all
others," that would have been much more accurate and my reaction would have
been somewhat different).
-----Original Message-----
From: Phillip Capper
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Sent: 7/10/2002 10:24 PM
Subject: RE: novelty and stereotypes: re collision
An additional point in response to Anna - not made clear in my first
response.
One of the unconscionable double binds that the Swiss authorities and
western media tried to place on the Russians were that they started off
by
accusing the Russian pilot of causing the collision by NOT OBEYING an
ATC
instruction and then, when it was pointed out that western pilots are
trained to disobey ATC when their TCAS is activated, they then tried to
accuse him of causing the accident by OBEYING ATC.
Phillip Capper,
Centre for Research on Work, Education and Business Ltd. (WEB Research),
Level 13
114 The Terrace
(PO Box 2855)
WELLINGTON
New Zealand
Ph: +64 4 499 8140
Fx: +64 4 499 8395
Mb: +64 021 519 741
-----Original Message-----
From: Stetsenko, Anna [mailto:AStetsenko@gc.cuny.edu]
Sent: Thursday, 11 July 2002 1:25 p.m.
To: 'xmca@weber.ucsd.edu '
Subject: novelty and stereotypes: re collision
Hi Philipp,
exactly because, as you say, "the collision over Germany is generating
very
high levels of activity at present," let me add a piece of activity by
expanding on the context of what happened in and around this collision.
Not
suprisingly, because as we know context is important, this can add a new
light and reveal whether we are dealing with novelty or stereotypes
here.
What happened IN the colision still remains to be determined. What is
pretty
clear however is what happened immediately after it, and this is the
piece
you skipped over completely in your description. Immediately after the
collision, all the media, but especially the Swiss and German,
uncritically
following the reports by Swiss controllers, blamed the Russian pilots
for
the accident based on assertions (and I list just few of them) that: 1.
Russian pilots have been given several warnings about being on a
collision
course well ahead of the accident (first reported as several minutes)
but
did not react because (here several versions were circulting) they did
not
speak English; they were tired; they were not trained properly, and 2.
Russian aircraft did not have on board collision warning systems
(because
Russian aircrafts in general do not have adequate technical equipment).
Accompanying media reports (NTV channel in Germany, for example, believe
me)
at the same time were reporting, as a matter of fact, that "the victims
were
anyway not children, because in Russia children after the age of 14 are
not
considered to be children."
I cannot even comment on the last blatant lie, but will note that the
rest
of this media coverage, and the related statements by Swiss controllers,
had
to be later revealed as exactly that - blantant lies. These were clear
attempts to cover up (the crime or the accident) and this needs to be
named
as such and treated respectively as a separate crime. I do not see yet
this
cover up crime being named for what it is in the media. Added to the
cover
up should also be attempts to hide the facts that the Swiss controller
was
ALONE in violation of all the rules, that he had to lead 5 other
flights,
one of which was landing at exactly the time of the collision, that one
critical piece of the Skyguide equipment was shut down and the only
telephone line was also shut down (as German controllers were making
desparate attempts to warn the Swiss controller on the phone but the
line
was dead).
Now, as the responsibility of Swiss controllers is surfacing, the
discourse
has shifted to statements that "both sides, Swiss and Russian are trying
to
blame each other" and you indirectly reproduced this discourse in your
message too. However, I see a difference between blaming someone for
what
this someone has done (this, I believe, should be called "finding out
who is
responsible") versus blaming someone for what one did not do and lying
about
facts (this I believe is a "cover up"). I have not seen anywhere,
including
Russian media (at least the leading newspapers) any blame being placed
on
Swiss controllers based on lies about their conduct. Do you see the
difference? So, there is no equivalence for both sides. Can you give me
examples on the contrary that Russian tried to blame smth on Swiss
controllers that then turned out to be not true?
Now, as to novelty. Actually, unlike your statement (that follows most
recent media reports) that Russian pilots are trained differently from
pilots from other countries, the standards of training are exactly the
same
as established by Internationa Association of Civil Aviation. Otherwise,
Russian pilots would not be allowed and would not be able to fly on
international routs. Moreover, the international standard instruction
for on
borad systems of collision warning does say that all the decisions must
be
made by pilots only in consultation with the controller.
So, the fact of the matter is that Russian pilots do speak English and
do
follow standard international instructions. The other thing is that when
you
have 44 seconds to react to conflicting warnings, there is no much time
for
consultations.
Further analysis will show if this analysis is correct. However, I would
really like it if you see that your description is skewed in one
direction -
that of thinking that there was something peculiar about Russian pilots
or
their training that might have caused the collision. (and as I said, I
know
that you follow the media but.. critical view of the media is needed).
That
is whay, I tend to see your description as a continuation of a
comfortbale
STEREOTYPE that Russian means inferior and Swiss (=Western) means
superior.
I do not see much novelty emerging in the situation so far, I see
playing
over and over of THE SAME OLD STEREOTYPES. Novelty does not grow on the
soil
of old stereotypes, I would think.
By the way, it could be, it just could be that the same stereotype did
play
into what happened IN the collision too, not just around it. I believe
(this
needs to be checked and will be checked I hope) that the situation
exactly
as it emerged leading to the collision (in its exact timing etc) might
not
have been forseen in the international instructions and repsetive rules
of
conduct for pilots might not have been clearly described. Then, what
perhaps
happened was extremely tragic and, again, tainted by stereotypes. It
could
be that the Russian pilot, having such a short time to react, and under
competing directions, acted based upon the typical stereotype about
Swiss as
equal to "perfect," "very exact" (if you say smth is very exact you say
"like a Swiss watch" in Russian). This is a very common stereotype in
Russia
and it has been reinforced in recent years of self-scrutiny and
self-criticism in Russian society in a trend of seeing all western as
superior.
This then would be a tragic picture of how deadly, literally,
stereotypes
can be. Given than no one on land was hurt only by some miracle (there
could
have been many victims of course in that beautiful part of Germany where
the
planes went down, I' ve seen this part many times), I would really ask
you
to watch a bit more carefully, for your own sake too, the stereotyping
processes that continue to unfold.
Does it make sense to you?
Anna
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Aug 01 2002 - 01:00:11 PDT