The following is an edited extract from Leading From The Jumpseat: How to Create Extraordinary Opportunities by Handing Over Control by Peter Docker.
At its worst, when ego grabs us, the consequences can extend way beyond a plummeting stock price. Perhaps one of the most notorious examples of this is when one person’s ego, and the environment it created, cost the lives of 583 people, in an incident that became the deadliest aviation disaster of all time.
On 27th March 1977 dense clouds drifted over the runway of Los Rodeos Airport in Tenerife, the largest of the Spanish Canary Islands, off the west coast of Africa. Tenerife is a popular destination for those seeking some winter sun, and this was a busy time of the year, with both scheduled and charter flights converging on the archipelago. The main hub was Gran Canaria Airport, but this had been closed earlier that day because of a terrorist bomb attack on the terminal. Consequently, many flights had been diverted to a neighbouring island and into the small – and by now very congested – Los Rodeos Airport, known these days as Tenerife Norte Airport. Two of the diverted aircraft were Pan Am Flight 1736 from New York and KLM Flight 4805 from Amsterdam – both jumbo jets. Although only a 30-minute flight from one airport to the other, by ferry the journey takes five hours.
After a few hours, the Spanish authorities were able to secure the terminal at Gran Canaria and reopen the airport. Crews of all the diverted flights would have been eager to fly their pas- sengers the short hop over to this, their original destination. Among them, refuelled and ready to go, was KLM Flight 4805, and the jumbo jet taxied to the runway for take-off. With so many planes on the ground and only one taxiway, in order to avoid gridlock, air traffic control had to instruct several jets to taxi down the runway before turning off.
The weather at Los Rodeos can change quickly. By the time KLM Flight 4805 reached the end of the runway, fog had descended over the airport. The KLM crew and air traffic controllers in the tower could no longer see each other. They also could not see Pan Am Flight 1736, which was still taxiing on the runway.
The KLM crew mistook a garbled radio message for clearance to depart and started their take-off run. They hit the Pan Am aircraft about halfway down the runway. The collision and sub- sequent fireball killed all the passengers and the entire crew aboard the KLM flight, as well as the vast majority of those on the Pan Am aircraft.
So why did this happen?
As Patrick Smith writes in his book Cockpit Confidential, many factors contributed to the accident, including the fog, the air traffic control tower not being able to see the aircraft, and poor radio procedures. However, the primary cause was found to be the KLM captain’s decision to take off without proper clearance.
The captain of the KLM crew was Jacob van Zanten. An experienced pilot, at the time of the accident van Zanten was the chief flight instructor for KLM and head of the Dutch company’s flight training school. As well as being recognized within the company as an expert on the Boeing 747 jumbo jet, he was also the “face of KLM”, with his image appearing as part of an advertising campaign for the airline.
The radio and cockpit voice-recorder transcripts show that, after the KLM flight had started its unauthorized take-off roll, air traffic control instructed the Pan Am crew to report when they had cleared the runway. They responded, “OK, will report when we’re clear.”
The KLM flight engineer heard this on the radio and asked his pilots, “Is he not clear, that Pan American?”
Van Zanten replied, “Oh, yes,” and continued the take-off.
The first officer, Klaas Meurs, did not challenge the captain’s decision to go, and van Zanten did not listen to the flight engineer’s tentative intervention either. As the most senior instructor captain at KLM, van Zanten enjoyed an almost celebrity status in the company, and it’s unlikely the other crew members felt able to intervene more assertively. Van Zanten’s ego was in charge. He knew best. If he’d been guided by humble confidence instead, it’s likely he would have listened to those around him and others would have felt able to speak up. Van Zanten’s status and ego, as it turned out, was a lethal combination.
The reason I know this story well is because of perhaps the only positive outcome from this tragic accident: the Tenerife disaster contributed to an important evolution of professional pilot training. Since the 1990s, every commercial and military pilot now receives instruction on what is known as crew resource management, or CRM.
CRM focuses on communication, decision making, and leadership in the cockpit. One aspect of the training is to ensure that even the most junior copilot has the confidence to question the actions of the most senior captain if they see or sense something is wrong. Pioneered by a former RAF pilot, David Beaty, the approach was adopted by United Airlines in 1981 and is now commonplace across the globe.
When I was a senior captain, I also held a high rank in my organization and fully recognized how this could adversely affect a junior copilot’s willingness to speak up when we were flying. So, before every flight with a new pilot, I would remind them that their job was to monitor me carefully and to call me out if they thought I’d made a mistake or had missed anything. By giving them this permission, it not only promoted best practice, it also raised the game for the copilot, and encouraged their contribution. In other words, it lifted them up.
At the root of our journey to Jumpseat Leadership is the intent to lift others up so they may grow and take the lead. The aim is to equip them so we can eventually hand over the reins and take a step back. We can only do this if we are prepared to let go of our ego and lead instead with humble confidence. The sooner we do that, the greater the progress we will also make as a team or organization.
Bình luận