![]() Nearly a decade and a half older than the captain. But the flight engineer? Fifty-eight years old. Here is a relevant factoid that Gladwell does not discuss: in Flight 801, the captain was 44 years old and the first officer was 41. Still another is the prestige of their schools, or military service. Another determinant, for example, is age. But anyone familiar with Korean culture knows that the professional ranking is not the only determinant of social hierarchy. (2) Gladwell makes much of the fact that Korean culture emphasizes hierarchy, and argues that the captain is accorded more deference based on his rank. It is as if New York is being described as extra-dangerous in the early 2000s by including the number of deaths from the 9/11 attacks. Further, that Gladwell would use incidents of terrorist attacks to pad the stats is darn near offensive. But in most cases, the consequence of being in the wrong airspace is not getting your plane shot down.) Yet Gladwell counts the deaths from all seven crashes to make the case that Korean Air was unusually dangerous, while neglecting to describe the true causes of two of the attacked planes.Īt the very least, this is disingenuous. (One may make the argument that lack of pilot skills caused the planes to venture into Russian airspace. Those three crashes clearly have little to do with pilot skills. So, out of the seven KAL crashes that happened in the 20 year span between 19, three were a result of a military or paramilitary attack. (She currently lives in South Korea after a presidential pardon.) One of the terrorists was actually caught in Bahrain as she was attempting to escape back to North Korea. The reason for that crash? North Korean terrorists planted a bomb on that plane before it took off, and the airplane was incinerated mid-flight. In the second part of the sentence, Gladwell is referring to KAL Flight 858, which crashed after leaving Abu Dhabi. But apparently, Gladwell did not find this significant enough to mention. relations, which was showing signs of hope until that point. The shoot-down of Flight 007 quickly cooled the Russia-U.S. Lawrence McDonald, an American Congressman from Georgia, lost his life on Flight 007. It is strange that Gladwell does not mention this, because the shoot-down of Flight 007 was one of the most significant events in the history of Cold War. Reason for the crash? It traveled into Russian airspace, and the Russian jets shot it down. In the first part of that sentence, Gladwell is referring to KAL Flight 007, which crashed in 1983. Gladwell simply writes: "Three years after that, the airline another 747 near Sakhalin Island, Russia, followed by a Boeing 707 that went down over the Andaman Sea in 1987" Here, Gladwell completely neglects to mention that two of the crashes were caused by either military engagement or terrorism. Then Gladwell ticks off six more crashes between 19. (In fact, although the aircraft was severely damaged, it managed to make a landing, saving the remaining passengers who were not killed by the attack. Lessons were learned." As if Korean Air was supposed to learn how not to crash a plane based on an incident in which a military jet shot down its aircraft. Gladwell recognizes the unusual nature of this crash, yet blithely writes: " was investigated and analyzed. Cause of the crash? The plane wandered into the Russian airspace at the height of the Cold War, and the a Russian fighter jet shot it down, killing two of the passengers on board. Curiously, Gladwell leads off with KAL's 1978 crash of Flight 902. (1) To build a case that Korean Air was more accident-prone than other airlines, Gladwell begins with a history of KAL's accidents. There are several instances of such legerdemain. First off, Gladwell carefully stacks the deck in favor of case by introducing ultimately irrelevant facts, and omitting potentially relevant facts.
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