Up to par, this episode has a British Airways 777 on approach to Heathrow in London and experiencing sudden failure in both engines. Through skilled, almost reflexive, airmanship the pilot manages to set the airplane down on the sodden grass just short of the runway, preventing a disastrous crash in the crowded streets of Housrow and stopping a fire from starting. The damage to the airframe was not as bad as it easily could have been, and no one was killed.
When the investigators take up their task of finding the root cause of the accident, it sometimes reminds me of the way the Chinese investigate disease outbreaks. In both cases, the incidents are approached with an open mind, with no prejudice. When the Chinese identified an outbreak of esophageal tumors, for instance, the first thing they did was test the soil, including its temperature. And the same blindly empirical approach is used in these investigations. The engines quit before landing? Okay. Were they out of gas? Actually, the engines weren't out of fuel. Was it the quality of the fuel itself? The origin of the fuel is traced back to Beijing, it's quality tested against more than 1,000 other samples, and it's normal. And so on -- digging deeper and deeper into what increasingly looks like an insoluble problem.
There is a solution, though it's so masked that it took a year to find and correct it. I admire the hell out of the tenacity and imagination of these investigators. I think I might have thrown up my hands and said let 'em die.
When the investigators take up their task of finding the root cause of the accident, it sometimes reminds me of the way the Chinese investigate disease outbreaks. In both cases, the incidents are approached with an open mind, with no prejudice. When the Chinese identified an outbreak of esophageal tumors, for instance, the first thing they did was test the soil, including its temperature. And the same blindly empirical approach is used in these investigations. The engines quit before landing? Okay. Were they out of gas? Actually, the engines weren't out of fuel. Was it the quality of the fuel itself? The origin of the fuel is traced back to Beijing, it's quality tested against more than 1,000 other samples, and it's normal. And so on -- digging deeper and deeper into what increasingly looks like an insoluble problem.
There is a solution, though it's so masked that it took a year to find and correct it. I admire the hell out of the tenacity and imagination of these investigators. I think I might have thrown up my hands and said let 'em die.
