So of course you’ve heard the story from Thursday about the Continental Airlines pilot who had a heart attack and died in the middle of a transatlantic flight.
Fortunately for the rest of the folks on the plane, the co-pilot and a fully-qualified relief pilot were on hand to land the plane without incident. In fact, most of the passengers had no idea that anything was out of the ordinary (save for an “is there a doctor in the house?” announcement over the PA system) until they were down on the tarmac and saw all the emergency vehicles.
So here’s the question — should the passengers have been told what was going on, while it was happening?
On the one hand, it’s not like any passenger could have done anything to influence the outcome, so why cause any unnecessary worry?
On the other hand, even on a plane over the middle of the ocean, there’s no guarantee that passengers wouldn’t have found out about it. I’ll have to doublecheck the timeline of events, but I believe that news Web sites were flashing breaking news banners about the flight while it was still in the air. (This was the case, for example, when a JetBlue plane had to make an emergency landing because of stuck landing gear, and the passengers, who’d been informed, were watching themselves on the inflight TVs).
If that’s the case, then all it would have taken is one inflight telephone call, and suddenly all bets are off and the air crew has to do damage control and panic prevention at 30,000 feet, on top of actually operating the plane.
I imagine that if the plane had in-flight Internet access, there would have been no question about disclosing what was going on. As mobile Internet becomes ubiquitous, there are fewer and fewer places where you have guaranteed control over the access to information, so transparency and disclosure become even more important.
To take a cynical view, transparency is a way to keep the initiative over releasing information that people might find out about anyway. It’s a matter of enlightened self-interest.
This brings up a second anecdote related to airlines and disclosure, namely when to keep your mouth shut (I’ve referenced this article before). The author notes that some announcements just don’t need to be made, especially when they raise questions that might not otherwise be raised — this particular example was a pilot announcing to passengers, “We have enough fuel to get to Boston.”
While 100% accurate, it was also 100% unnecessary — that you have enough gas to get to your destination should be implicit (unless your chosen airline has a reputation of diverting to backup airports because of fuel management snafus, in which case I would question your decision-making skills).
Of course, if a passenger asks how much fuel is on board, this is where transparency and disclosure come into play, as well as knowing how to answer the question that the passenger is really asking. For an aviation buff, you might give the exact fuel load in pounds; for a nervous flyer, you might contextualize it by saying it’s plenty to reach our destination, as well as primary and secondary backups (assuming they’re just looking to be reassured).
Does this mean that, as an air passenger, I should be continually pinging the air staff, “Excuse me, are the pilots still alive?” I’m not sure how to answer that.
Do you think the passengers should have been told what was going on? I’d like to hear, as well as any other opinions you might have about transparency and overdisclosure, so please leave a comment.
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