I couldn’t put it down after reading the first chapter. It starts with the story of Capt. Jacob Van Zanten – he was a very methodical guy and had a spotless record which made him head of KLM’s safety program. He was the captain of KLM flight 4805 which was en route from Amsterdam to Las Palmas airport in the Canary Islands. He got an urgent message from air traffic control that a terrorist bomb exploded at the airport, thus, Las Palmas will be closed until further notice.
Van Zanten was prepared for this kind of situation. He had performed a lot of drills on this in the past, plus, he had just returned from leading a 6-month safety course. He obeyed orders to land on the island of Tenerife, a small airport, to join other planes that have diverted.
When Van Zanten’s plane safely landed, he started to worry over the mandated rest period which was instituted by the Dutch government. (There’s a maximum flying time for pilots and after which, they are required to rest for certain no. of hours.) Flying after the mandated rest period was out of the question as it was a crime punishable by imprisonment. On the other hand, if he takes the mandated rest period, there were other consequences – there was no replacement crew, they had to stay overnight and thus, the airline will have to look for hotel rooms for the passengers (which isn’t easy since the island was just small and there were a lot of other flights stranded) and lastly, if his flight got delayed, it would result to a chain reaction of flight cancellations throughout KLM.
Van Zanten decided to keep the passengers on board so that when Las Palmas reopened, he could get back in the air immediately. While waiting, he spent time planning with the crew on ways to save time. He also called KLM headquarters to find out exactly how much time he had before the mandated rest period.
To save on time, he decided to refuel at the island – this would save them about 30 minutes in Las Palmas. Just as when they started refueling, gates reopened but it was too late to stop the refueling which takes about 35 minutes.
Just as when they were set to go, a thick fog descended upon the runway and visibility dropped that it’s impossible to see the end of the runway from the cockpit window. As the fog got worse, Van Zanten knew that the chance of taking off was getting slim. It was a now or never moment.
The next thing Van Zanten did was out of character. He revved up the engines and lurched down the airway. The co-pilot got confused and said, “Wait a minute. We don’t have ATC Clearance.” “I know that,” Van Zanten replied. “Go ahead and ask.”
The co-pilot got on the radio and received airway clearance approval for the flight plan. But the tower said nothing about the vital takeoff clearance. But despite of that, Van Zanten turned the throttle to full power and roared down the foggy runway.
The 747 was at take-off speed when out of nowhere, the sight of a Pan Am 747, parked across the runway, came into view. There was no way to stop or swerve. Instinctively, Van Zanten knew his only chance was to take off early. He managed to pull up the aircraft’s nose but the underside of the plane’s fuselage ripped through the top of the Pan Am plane. The KLM plane hurtled 500 yards down the runway and exploded. 584 people died that day.
There were a lot of factors surrounding the tragedy - the PanAm plane was in the wrong place. The thick fog made the situation invisible to Van Zanten, the Pan Am pilot and the tower controllers. The traffic controllers were also undermanned given the unusual number of planes stranded at the small airport. But take away all these, the tragedy would never have occurred if Van Zanten had not taken off without the vital take-off clearance.
And the big question is – why would a seasoned pilot, the head of safety, make such an irresponsible decision? Simply put, for no apparent logical reason, sometimes we overreact to perceived losses. Van Zanten’s desire to avoid delay started out small. At first, he simply wanted to keep passengers on board to save time. But as the delay grew longer, the potential loss loomed larger – the cost of putting up the passengers for an overnight stay, the chain reaction of delayed flights and the blot on his reputation for being on time. Van Zanten was so focused on avoiding an overnight stay that he tuned out all other considerations, including his common sense and years of training.
It's such a sad story and it's even sadder when you think about the main cause of Van Zanten's anxiety - the mandated rest period. I know the government has good intentions for imposing this law but perhaps there should be a lesser grave sanction than imprisonment, and even exemptions on special cases like flight diversions. Or perhaps, sanctions have changed since then.
I remember, mandated rest period is also imposed on drivers across Europe. During my European trips (especially in Western Europe where we had longer land travels in between countries), our Portuguese driver kept on checking his watch come 4 or 5pm. Sometimes, when we're running behind schedule due to unexpected traffic, we even had to cut our itineraries short so we can reach the hotel before the driver's mandated rest period.
Anyway, going back to Sway, there are more stories, studies and insights in the book which try to explore other causes of irrational behavior such as why some people wouldn’t want to end a relationship even if they know it’s going nowhere, why a Harvard Business School student would be willing to pay USD204 for a USD20 bill and why the audience of Who Wants to be a Millionaire in Russia would deliberately choose the wrong answer when a contestant uses them as lifeline. Will share more next time. :)