James Fallows

The captain came out of the cockpit and stood in the aisle. His cap dangled in one hand. "All electricity will remain off," he said. Something about an open current and preventing a cabin fire. Confused noises spread through the cabin, but no one said a word. "I'll yell the rest of my commands from the cockpit." I could see sweat stains under his arms. "Not going to sugarcoat it," he said. "We're just going to try to land it."

I was not on that plane, but I can tell you: This. Did. Not. Occur. The dangling cap-in-hand; the sweat stains; the captain coming out of the cockpit and saying he would "yell" his commands; the "not going to sugarcoat it" and "just going to try to land it." No. But the explanation from the magazine's editor, Hugo Lindgren, was that the story aspired to describe what one writer "felt and heard," what he remembered, rather than what anyone else might recall. ("Naturally, not every detail matches everybody else's experience. Surely even people on that plane would remember it differently.")

At first, I thought this explanation was mainly artful in rendering the story un-falsifiable. I thought about it differently and more sympathetically after hearing, this weekend, a remarkable episode of the the TED Radio Hour, hosted by my former All Things Considered comrade Guy Raz.

The subject of the show was the unreliability of even the "strongest" and clearest memories. The first segment, with a legal authority named Scott Fraser, went into the very great likelihood of error, false certainty, and wishful filling-in of facts that accompanied most eyewitness recollections. The second segment, with the sociologist and economist  psychologist (who won a Nobel prize in economics) Daniel Kahneman, was even more directly applicable to the NYT Mag case. It dealt with extremely "vivid" memories that might never have happened, or with details very different from what the rememberer became "sure" had occurred. Kahneman described one of the most powerful episodes from his childhood as a Jewish boy in Nazi-occupied France. And then he explained why he couldn't be sure the event had ever happened the way he "recalled." (The final segment was the writer Joshua Foer describing how he won the national trained-memory championship.)

By chance, immediately after that show I listened to a recent episode of Radiolab, which in one chilling segment reinforced the Memento / Inception / Matrix- like point that we can very rarely be sure what is "really" going on. So maybe that was the story with the New York Times. Something happened on an airplane; a passenger on that plane imagined and then remembered something else; and that something-else is what he, in all sincerity, described to us.

And then I saw an update on Patrick Smith's site.
__

2. Smith, an airline pilot, has for many years written the celebrated Ask the Pilot chronicles, along with his excellent new book Cockpit Confidential. (Seriously: If there is anything you don't like, or do like, about air travel, you'll find this book fascinating.) Smith has ample reason to be believed on this topic, and no reason to risk his reputation by inventing facts. And today he says that he has come across maintenance records for that "doomed" flight that made an emergency landing in Philadelphia. What he has found is not convenient for the story Noah Gallagher Shannon told.

You can get all the details from from Smith, but here's the heart of it. Smith says that the flight crew's logbooks from the flight show this crucial notation:
           "ECAM HYD Y RSVR LO LVL" 

Let's break this down. ECAM is the monitoring service for system-functions on an Airbus. HYD stands for the hydraulic systems for controlling the plane; Y stands for "Yellow," to identify one of the three color-coded hydraulic systems. RSVR LO LVL means "reservoir at low level" [see, you too can be a pilot], a warning signal about potential problems with that hydraulic system.

This was the "emergency." It was not a "problem with the landing gear," which was the entire premise of the NYT Magazine article. (The yellow hydraulic system does not control the plane's landing gear, as the pilots would beyond any question have known -- you're always drilled and tested on which systems control which functions, and what happens if they fail.) There is nothing in this circumstance that would have made a professional flight crew panic or try to prepare passengers for the worst. Moreover, after the plane landed in Philadelphia, a maintenance crew found (according to Smith) that this was purely a faulty-indicator problem. The hydraulic level had been fine all along. Let Smith spell it out:

An A320 captain I spoke to says that a shut-down of the yellow system would have meant, at worst, a slightly longer-than-normal landing roll (due to loss of the right engine thrust reverser and some of the wing spoiler panels), and, in newer A320s, loss of the nose-gear steering system, requiring a tow to the gate.

There were enough red flags [in Shannon's story] to begin with, but this puts it over the top, tilting the entire account from one of eye-rolling embellishment toward one of outright fabrication.

There was never a problem with the landing gear. There was never a reason for the pilots to come out, sweat-drenched, and say brave words to the possibly doomed souls aboard. Based on what Patrick Smith has learned, there was never a reason to shut off all the lights and electricity in the plane. Memory is unreliable. But the Times Magazine story appears to be something more than that, and worth another look by the paper.

Last night I posted the wonderful Weibo-viral-hit matchup of Xi Jinping walking with Barack Obama, and Winnie the Pooh walking with Tigger. In case you've forgotten:

I'm not referring to Edward Snowden (nor to the man* above) but instead to someone who resisted in a different, very quiet way, more than a decade ago. The account below comes from a person I have known for a long time, and it describes someone I also know. It's worth reading both for the observations in the first half and for the personal story in the second. This reader writes:

I've been thinking about the recent leak investigations.  I'm usually very sympathetic to my  dad's [ca. age 80] very liberal take on these sorts of things.  But I've been having a hard time getting too excited about it. To me, this is the inevitable result of the way that technology has developed. 

Sadly, the tech visionaries who predicted that the internet would be revolutionary were correct, but not in the way that they expected.  We all want to be able to seamlessly move our work and online lives from desktop to laptop to smartphone to ipads.  Tech companies have given us this, and in the process have created vast warehouses of our digital lives that are assumed to have great value and you can bet that there is a constant effort at these companies to figure out how to monetize this digital storehouse.  So the NSA is simply getting a copy of the information that already is being saved to be mined for possible profit.

The companies, like Obama, assure us that they strip out identifying information.  The companies, like Obama, are asking us to trust them.  To me, the only way to change this threat to our individual liberties would be to make it illegal for any collection of our digital footprints by anyone.  And I don't see this happening.

This brings to mind a story about XX [our mutual acquaintance] not long after 9/11.  He was head of the technical team at YY [one of the former Baby Bell companies] and he was getting pressured to set up digital taps based on secret government warrants shown to the company's executives by government representatives where the company could only look at the secret warrant, but not make a copy or take any notes.  XX was bothered by the fact that once YY set up these digital taps, they were never turned off.  He also was concerned that there was no way even to validate whether these requests even came from legitimate government representatives.   And yet he wanted to keep his job. 

So he told his bosses that he would be more than happy to have his team of engineers comply, but just needed to have the exact procedures written down so that they could keep accurate records because, "at YY, we are trained to document everything we do in writing very carefully to protect ourselves and the company." 

This didn't make the government or the YY executives happy, so they flew him out to headquarters in [city ZZ] and basically tried to strong arm him into just doing it without asking any questions.   He stuck to his "I am very happy to do this, but  just want to protect my team and the company and make sure that we set up the same procedures here that we have for everything else we do" mantra.  When he went back home he sent an email to company lawyers who had called him in laying out what his understanding of what they wanted him to do and how he should document the work.

And that's the last he heard and YY was one of the only phone companies that didn't comply with secret government digital tapping requests that came to light during the Bush presidency.  Sadly, it seems that there are very few people like XX out there, so there you go...

If we finally are beginning the security-state "debate" that is many years overdue, one crucial element to examine is the interaction among technological possibilities, institutional imperatives, and the pressure on individuals to say Yes or No. It is too much to expect everyone, or even most people, to do what this telecom-company employee did. Yet his quiet example should be noted.

..when everything is so secret, how can one be sure that one is following orders (even a Court order -- ever heard of forgeries?)  from legitimate authority?

   ("He also was concerned that there was no way even to validate whether these requests even came from legitimate government representatives. " -- from your latest post a few minutes ago)

I think that the danger of PRISM etc Is misuse of the data bases by people who are clearly operating _outside the law_... Snowden (for example and by his own claim) could have been using his data resources for insider trading...just go look into the email of the honchos at Morgan Stnley. They've made an information monoculture -- and you know how risky monocultures in agriculture.

Three points:

Lots of other, weightier things going on, but this was too day-appropriate to pass up. Thanks to reader (and subscriber!) SC in London.

I always like to see Federer win, because he looks just like one of our sons, and (by the way) he plays the sport with unique beauty. But well done Nadal -- and Serena Williams, with a charming speech all in French at the end of her match.

Today this note came in from a reader in Florida, about the revelations of NSA phone-surveillance programs:

In general, I'm partial to ACLU and EFF arguments about privacy and civil liberties in the digital age. But I'm also a pragmatist about national security, and the reality that there are foreign and domestic terrorists who will kill many innocent citizens if they can...

Now the security damage from these leaks becomes a bit clearer for me. Prior to these revelations, I doubt that Al-Qaeda or domestic terrorist groups (e.g., Aryan Brotherhood) could figure out how they were routinely identified and compromised. They probably assumed an informant betrayed them, or they simply assumed that they were exposed by bad luck. But now, the smarter (therefore more dangerous) terrorists know that their cell phone patterns and networks are likely the problem.

What to do if you're a terrorist? If it were me, I'd have everyone in my network throw away their cell phone periodically, purchase a new prepaid phone with cash, and distribute new phone numbers via secure means. Maybe I would use clandestine meetings. Or pay phones. Or dead drops. The point is, a very valuable (and top secret) intelligence collection tool has been compromised.

Will get to security-state news of all sorts later today. For now, quite a remarkable illustration of the spread of the "false equivalence" outlook. For background on that concept, start here. The gist is:

But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation even among people who should and do know better.

To overgeneralize, in foreign policy I consider Susan Rice and Samantha Power to be "liberal interventionists." What is American power for, if it is not to do good in the world? (Rice at center, Power at left in Reuters photo.)

Last week I mentioned the accusations in the state-run Chinese press that Chinese travelers to America were getting brusque treatment from United Airlines, allegedly because they were Chinese. Two days ago some 100 high school seniors from Yeshivah of Flatbush, in Brooklyn, were made to leave an AirTran flight, allegedly (according to a Time story) because of bias against a "visibly Jewish" group. According to the AirTran flight crew, it was because the kids wouldn't sit down and turn off their cell phones when told to do so. You can see a picture of some of the kids at the NY Daily News site. Of course there is a long skein of similar rumblings from the modern world of the skies: flying while black; flying while brown; flying while half-Arab and half-Jewish; flying your own plane while Hasidic; flying your own plane from California; and so on.

Now, three putting-it-in perspective responses. First, a defense of the specific United Airlines staffer singled out for criticism in the Chinese press. I didn't use this person's name in my earlier item, even though it was all over the original piece in the People's Daily, and I've also removed it from the reader's note below. You can find it on your own, but I figure there is no point in feeding a name unnecessarily into the world's search-engine bots. (I have tried to contact this staffer, so far with no results.) But, with permission, I'm using the real name of the reader, Joseph Gualtieri of Hong Kong. He writes:

I just saw your post about the United Airlines-related article in the People Daily. It so happens that I have encountered XX [the UAL agent] before, and I feel I should jump in to complement the image portrayed in that article.

Back in March I flew from Hong Kong (where I live) to New York (where I'm from) upon the birth of my first niece. The flight path was a bit weird: direct from HKG to EWR and then LGA-ORD-HKG. Anyway, my flight back from LGA to ORD was an early one and, long story short, I got mixed up and ended up back at EWR and not at LGA. I'm an anxious guy even when the going is good and when I realized my error I was literally shaking with dread at the prospect of missing my connection in Chicago (there there was only an hour to transfer), having to buy a new ticket back to HK, missing work engagements, all that.

Well, it was my good fortunate to encounter XX. Beginning with "I'm totally screwed, because..." I told her my situation. She gave me possibly the sweetest smile I've ever seen, told me not to worry, and stepped away to make a phone call. Thirty seconds, maybe a minute later she had me on a direct flight from EWR and HKG (UA 116).  I remember her name, and always will remember her name, as a consequence of the great kindness she showed me. In fact, I feel like that was the best customer service experience of my life: through sheer idiocy, I messed everything up and United responded by giving me what was, in effect, a superior product (i.e. a more expensive seat on a direct flight).

I also want to point out that I'm by no means an elite flyer; I was flying economy (regular, not even premium economy) and I hadn't yet reached silver status on Mileage Plus, not exactly the kind of guy an airline "should" go out of its way to accommodate. Obviously I have no idea what the true story behind the People's Daily article is, but I can tell you that XX is hands down the kindest, most helpful airline employee that I have ever met (or, frankly, than I can imagine)....

Thanks for reading and do consider at least alluding to this experience if you should revisit this subject. Given that she was mentioned by name in the People's Daily, I just think, in this era of false equivalence, it's important to point out that she was, at least this one time, insanely understanding.

Noted, with thanks. On the other hand, from an expat I know who has lived for a long time in Asia, this contrary report:

I have American friends here [in China] who now refuse to fly United because they have witnessed so many instances of flight attendant rudeness to Chinese passengers.  I still take UA, for its convenient routes, but I share their view that far too many United flight attendants;
  a. radiate contempt for passengers who don't speak English
  b. take a very harsh, downright nasty, approach to any incident involving Chinese passengers who aren't sure what is expected of them, or aren't doing what is expected of them by UA's policies.
 
Of course there are exceptions, many.  But this seems to be the rule.  UA flight attendants are not known for their patience and charm under the best of circumstances, with any passengers, but a plane that is 2/3 full of Chinese passengers seems to bring out the absolute worst in them....

[Is it anti-Chinese "bias"?]  I think it's normal rudeness made worse by their refusal to acknowledge that the passengers in question do not understand English and therefore are dependent on the airline to make extra efforts to communicate.  It's not their fault that they don't speak English.  United wants these people's business.  Facial expressions and tones of voice that express annoyance and contempt are way, way out of line. 

The Continental crews, who insist on referrring to themselves as Continental crews when I speak with them on the Beijing/Newark flights, are better.

This rings true to my overall experience, on the dozens of mostly-United flights I have taken between North America and Beijing or Shanghai. (Including the ongoing self-identification of the "Ex-Cons," the former Continental crews.) The passenger load seems to be increasingly Chinese -- which is good! Some of these Chinese passengers seem to be taking their first-ever airplane trip, and most of them are from a domestic-Chinese airline culture that just works differently from America's. Domestic Chinese passengers may be accustomed to people walking around when the airplane is taxiing, having the cabin crew give ineffectual suggestions rather than orders, etc. When I can find it, I'll insert a picture of a domestic flight in China in which passengers were lined up in the aisle, bags in hand, as the plane touched down. Not many of these travelers are comfortable in English. Thus the scenario the reader describes.

But, again, is it "bias"? For our final word I turn to a rabbi from the Midwest, who says of the Yeshivah of Flatbush / AirTran episode:

While I wasn't a witness to what happened onboard, I question the veracity of the claims made by the adult chaperones of the yeshiva students who were forced off the plane because of Anti-Semitism. I'm wondering if it's just another example of flight attendants who have a zero tolerance because of how they feel about their unhappy professional lives  - as you've opined about in the past - or of inappropriate passenger behavior that was simply intolerable for other passengers and crew.

This rabbi adds that "I travel frequently and am easily identifiable as someone who is Jewish (i.e. I wear a kippah (yarmulke)). I have never experienced anti-Semitism at the hands of a flight attendant or pilot." I think he's right, in the sentence from his message that I've put in bold. Air travel is becoming a leading-edge indicator of many of the fray-points in modern life, from the unhappy outlook of many who work in the industry, to the increasing incursions of security-state thinking into travel aboard aircraft large or small.

And in case you're wondering about the headline...

I'm going to wait a little while before putting up more first-hand accounts from people who have been subjected to stop-and-frisk in the skies. In a sense -- perhaps like normal stop-and-frisk -- the stories are all the same. In the aviation cases, pilots who have carefully followed all known rules:

• find themselves surrounded by armed DHS/FBI/DEA/local-police forces when they land at out-of-the-way airports;
  
• are detained for between two and four hours while dog-equipped teams inspect all their luggage and every part of the plane;
  
• in many of the cases I've recounted the pilots are taken from the plane at gunpoint, as in the photo; and
  
• eventually they're let go. The troops are looking for drugs, or terrorists, or something else, but whatever they have in mind, they haven't found it on these planes.

I know this is a useless cry into the void.  I'm sure that Google has the numbers to show that people just weren't using SMS search.  But both my wife and I used it A LOT.  And we are both really feeling it now that it's gone.  At least when they pulled the plug on Google Reader there were ample alternatives to turn to.  But for people without a web-enabled phone, SMS search was a critical tool. (You could even get turn by turn directions using SMS search.) And there really is no alternative. Not even a phone book.  Seriously. Stop by your nearest shop- pick one- and ask if you can use their phone book.

The problem with letting capitalism hold such dramatic sway over society is that there's no one looking out for the fewer of us.  Imagine what the landscape would have looked like had phone companies been allowed to build out only the profitable areas of the country.

Positive, again with niche impact. A very nice though still-in-development mapping app to help you choose your ideal beer and discover new ones you will like. More from Flowing Data and Fast Company, and thanks to reader DP.

I've always wondered how exactly to describe the temperament, the broadmindedness, the analytical subtlety, the Id that through the decades have shaped the Wall Street Journal's editorial page. Conveniently, the Journal has filled that need, via this video interview with one of its editorial board members. Henceforth when you read the Journal's editorials, I invite you to hear this voice, expression, and tone.

The following is an account of Three IFR flights from KSEE to L35 for fuel then to KBFE for more fuel then the destination KMQY.  [An IFR flight is under Instrument Flight Rules. The significant point here is that for IFR flights the FAA knows the name of the pilot; the details and home base of the plane; and every inch of the route it will take across the country. Most airports in the U.S. officially have "K" before their airport names -- KLAX, KJFK, etc. KSEE is Gillespie field, in San Diego; KBFE is Terry County Airport in Brownfield, Texas, south of Lubbock, where Blackburn stopped for gas. His destination was KMQY, Smyrna airport in Tennessee. The other airport is L35, in Big Bear Lake, California, where he also got gas. I won't go into why some smaller airports don't start with "K."]

I departed at 5AM on October 21st 2010 from KSEE. It was IFR, with poor visibility, to Big Bear CA, L35, for fuel and further flight planning. The weather was changing from mid- Texas to the north [and Blackburn had to adjust his planned route]. The route was also IFR more or less direct from L35 to Brownfield Texas and was conducted at Flight Level 270. [Approximately 27,000 feet] It was without a doubt a good fast flight at 300+ Knots [usually there is a tailwind for planes headed west to east].

The flight was planned for training purposes in the MU2 and for recurrent training to satisfy the requirements necessary to fly the MU2. [The piloting world has both regulatory and insurance-related requirements for frequent recurrent training. I was in fact doing some of that today in my Cirrus SR-22.]

The weather was down to 2,500 feet upon arrival to KBFE for fuel. [That is, the clouds were 2,500 feet above ground level as he came in for a landing. In pilot-world, "weather" often means "bad weather," as in "we ran into some weather."] The airport manager at KBFE,  whose name was XX, came to assist me with fuel.  He noticed the one of the tires was low and provided me a bottle of nitrogen to fill it up. We had a length discussion [about some mutual friends, including some who had come to tragic ends.] We had a long talk about that and shook our heads with what a small world it was. 

As I was returning the bottle in his shop the phone rang, the recorder picked it up and the manager answered.  I could hear the entire conversation.  The gentleman identified himself as "Homeland Security" and asked if a Mitsubishi was taking on fuel and XX said yes asked if he wanted to talk to me.  The caller said NO and asked if I could hear him and XX said no, as he did not know I was listening.  The caller said I will call you right back see if you can delay his departure and hung up. 

As I entered the shop I asked him if that call was about me and he said "Well sort of".  I told him I heard the call on his recorder and that I was going to depart now.  I filed an IFR flight plan and went direct to KMQY, in Smyrna Tennessee.  I landed and parked next to the National Guard after asking permission. [Smaller airports often have a variety of craft -- private airplanes, police helicopters, National Guard, etc, and you get local guidance on where to park.]

As I walked down the street to the office of the Mitsubishi Flight School, the airport security stopped me and asked if I just arrived in the MU2. I said yes.  He parked his car and said let's walk back to your aircraft.  He would not answer any questions. Just, let's get to your aircraft. 

As we walked to where the plane was parked,  he said I will need your identification, drivers license, Pilots License, Medical, aircraft registration and any other documents relating to the operation of this aircraft.  In the distance I noticed a string of 5 or 6 cars with Blue Flashing lights.  I asked if those cars were coming for my benefit and he repeated the demands for the documents and watched as I gathered them from the aircraft.  I had everything  arranged as the flight school was also going to need to see all of the same information before we started school. 

The 5 or 6 cars arrived and the gentleman immediately asked where the other two passengers went.  I said I had no other passengers as I was here to attend [flight training school].  He said several times that he wanted me to tell him who the other two persons were and I said there were none. 

He then asked If I was carrying a large sum of money and I said well I guess.  I reached into my pocked took the wallet out and counted out $300 which was more then I usually carry with me.  He said he was looking for a large sum.  I said like what and he said well like $250,000. 

I said NO I no longer carry that type of money because my wife would spend it.  He found no humor in this.  He asked why I did not stop when I crossed the Border.  I answered that I came from Brownfield, Texas, and from California before that.  All he had to do was look at my frequencies on my knee board and or look into my flight on Flight Aware as it was all IFR. [The pilot is saying (a) that the list of radio frequencies, for the air-traffic controllers he had been talking to through the flight, would show a sequence from California through Texas to Tennesee; and (b) that the radar tracks kept on FlightAware would also show his route.]

To this he answered "We will do this our way". I said again I was attending school for the recurrent training.  He said nothing to that and then requested access to the aircraft.  I said for what and he said he had a need to search the aircraft and that in fact if I was not carrying drugs or large sums of money that I shouldn't have a problem with that.

I asked him who all these people were and he informed me that he had three agencies investigating me  and they were Homeland Security, The FBI, and DEA.  Each team had their own dogs that would be going through the aircraft and that they would be as careful as they could.  I  gave permission for him to search the aircraft. 

That is when he brought out 3 dogs and what appeared to be 3 separate teams of two people with each dog.  One team went in at a time and after they were done they came over to ask me questions. 

At some point I was taken behind one of the vans and asked questions.  I asked to be in front of the vans as I wanted to see what if anything was going into the aircraft and they said no they wanted me right where I was.  They asked about other passengers, Mexico, drugs and money each time.  They would not allow me to make any calls and this went on till the wee hours in the morning for at least 4 hours.

At this point I was shaking in my boots.  I was absolutely concerned they were going to plant something in my aircraft.  After they completed their questioning over and over again they finally  instructed me to move my aircraft to a different parking  area and that the security would escort me off the airport and that they were done.  

And they were gone.  No contact information, no reports, no comments no nothing from them, nothing.  My phone was now dead and I knew that my wife was worried.  The security guard allowed me to use his battery as we had the same phone.  He also apologized for the awful interrogation and told me that they had called him earlier in the day and advised him to detain me with any means necessary until they arrived. He had no choice he had to do whatever they told him to do. 

He knew I was there for school because he knew of the MU2 instruction that was provided at this airport.
 
The next day I called my brother and asked him to look on flight aware for my flights.  He called back and said I have your flight from Ksee to L35 Big Bear and also the L35 flight to BFE Brown Field Texas.  The flights were direct and showed the correct flight levels.  The flight from BFE Brown Field however had been changed and showed a speed of 90 knots to 115 knots and never above 3,500 feet and all over the place south to the border and north for 60 miles and all over the place but never to MQY Smyrna Tennessee.  According to the Fight Aware I never arrived in Tennessee.
 
I can speculate as to a couple of the details and the first if about the money.  I had a conversation with a business associate about a project I was working on that needed a capital investment of $250,000.00 and during the same conversation I mentioned after my flight to Tennessee that I was going to Mexico in my airplane down to Cabo.  I think it is possible, that someone was listening to my cell phone for some reason and that is what started something with homeland security....

I really do not know if I am being treated any different than anyone else.... I will continue to fly and mostly IFR.  I will NOT be deterred from my passion of flight.

 In this case, unlike most of the previous ones, Blackburn was not held at gunpoint during the questioning and detention. But in all these cases we have many hours of detention, inspection by dogs, people left rattled and humiliated, and no indication of anything approaching probable cause. Further cases and commentary tomorrow. For now, just adding to the dossier. Sincere thanks to David Blackburn for going on the record here.

Being hypotheses, these are subject to testing and disproof. The experiment goes on.

This is now more than a week old, but in case anyone has missed it I wanted to take note.