Anna,
Thankyou for your comments. but I think you misunderstand me. I was
reporting not on the media reports of the accident, but on the nature of the
electronic conversations amongst pilots, including Russian pilots. It was
not me who said that Russian pilots are trained differently, but the Russian
pilots themselves on these discussion forums. The conversation on the
listservs has gone something like this:
Western Pilots: "Why did he obey ATC and not his TCAS RA?"
Russian Pilots: "Because that is what we are trained to do."
Western Pilots: "Oh my God! We're trained to do the opposite. What does
ICAO say?"
..... followed by a gradual descent into linguistic chaos.
Nor was I suggesting that it was the Russians themselves who sought to blame
the Swiss controller. In fact it is primarily Swiss ATC managers who want to
blame the controller (as their second choice to the Russian pilot, who is
increasingly not a good candidate for scapegoating), while European ATC
unions want to blame the Swiss management.
I agree with you entirely about the appalling smears on the Russians that
immediately followed the accident. The discussion forums that I was
reporting on have a general agreement that:
(a) almost all Russian pilots flying on international routes speak almost
perfect English, in fact better English than most non native speakers of
English flying internationally. English ATC officers have commented that
they are better equipped than most American pilots when flying in Europe,
while American ATC have said they'd rather control Russians than any other
non US pilots:
(b) the Tupoley was fully equipped to the same standards as the DHL Boeing:
(c) Russian pilots flying on international routes exhibit a very high
standard of ATC discipline - better, in fact, than most western pilots:
(d) in all communications and actions up to the moment of the collision the
pilot of the Tupolev had spoken perfect English and had obeyed all ATC
instructions precisely.
So I believe that my initial post was intended to give exactly the opposite
impression to the one you attribute to it. I apologise if I miscommunicated.
However, I disagree with your point about ICAO international operational
standards. They are not absolute in the sense that ICAO procedural documents
are only open to one interpretation. That is precisely one of the
'novelties' that is being learned about in the professional aftermath of the
collision. Pilots of all nations in the discussion forums are engaged in
very vigorius debate about what current ICAO standard procedures on the use
of TCAS (i.e. on board collision avoidance equipment) actually are. It turns
out that different countries' internal aviation authorities have a while
range of different intepretations, with the Russian intepretation just one
of many. It just transpires that in this case the Russian interpetation was
the one that presented the flight crew with a terrible dilemma when the two
contradictory instructions came in simultaneously.
There is now nobody (or at least nobody who is still speaking up) on the
discussion forums who is impugning the competence of professionalism of the
Russian aircrew. It was purely a matter of chance that it was the Russian,
and not the DHL, crew who were faced with that dilemma. As you rightly say,
this is still not the clear case in the media.
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