Malcom Gladwell is out and about talking up his new book, Outliers. Among the stories he tells in the book is that of the January 1990 plane crash in which a Colombian jetliner crashed on Long Island, N.Y., after running out of fuel.
Gladwell suggests the cause was “cultural issues.” Salon’s Ask The Pilot columnist, Patrick Smith, says that while Gladwell’s theory is fascinating and provocative, on the speaking circuit he’s been hitting and missing. Here, a big miss:
CNN interviewer: Another fascinating finding is that you are more likely to be in a plane crash if the pilot comes from a particular country. What’s that all about?
Gladwell: Yes. That’s a fascinating thing. The single most important variable in determining whether a plane crashes is not the plane, it’s not the maintenance, it’s not the weather, it’s the culture the pilot comes from.
That is a reckless and untrue statement. There is nothing, statistically or empirically, to justify such a conclusion. Looking over the accidents from the past several years, I see crashes involving airplanes from Nigeria, Cyprus, Kenya, France, Russia, Brazil, Indonesia, Thailand. Looking further into their various causes, I do see a pattern of pilot error, usually in response to technical failure or some other unusual situation, but the majority of fatal mistakes were strictly technical/operational.
A factor in a limited number of accidents? I can accept that. But “the single most important variable in determining whether a plane crashes”? That is totally absurd, and I am extremely disappointed that somebody as influential as Malcolm Gladwell said it. In addition to being incorrect, it encourages the widely held notion that non-Western airlines are by their nature less safe than those of North America and Europe — a mythology I’ve addressed many times in this column.
No comment yet from Gladwell.