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A Reminder: Britain's Last Wimbledon Champ Won 36 Years Ago, Not 77
Professional Pilots on the San Francisco Crash
The Atlantic In Paris--Dispatch #2
What To Read About the San Francisco Airport Crash

A Reminder: Britain's Last Wimbledon Champ Won 36 Years Ago, Not 77

Posted: 07 Jul 2013 03:43 PM PDT

The United Kingdom is rejoicing, as Scotland's Andy Murray has beaten Serbia's Novak Djokovic to claim his first Wimbledon men's singles title and end the U.K.'s long title drought in his division. Many of the headlines around the world have blared out sentiments like "Andy Murray wins Wimbledon, ends 77-year British drought" and "Inspired Murray ends 77 years of British hurt."

However, let's not forget that 2013 may mark the first time a British man has won in 77 years, but the last time a Brit won a singles title at their home Grand Slam tournament was actually just 36 years ago. And as Wimbledon singles finals go, that one was a pretty big deal, too.

The (Relative) Triumph of U.S. Women's Tennis at the 2013 French Open

In 1977, the popular Englishwoman Virginia Wade finally put a crucial win at the end of a frustrating "try-try-again" story even longer than Andy Murray's. On that day, Britain tossed aside its famous keep-calm mantra just like it did this weekend, as Wade claimed the Wimbledon title for the British on the tournament's 100th anniversary. She was handed the Venus Rosewater Dish by none other than Queen Elizabeth II.

Wade had won two Grand Slams and been seeded at the previous 10 Wimbledons—but had famously never made it past the semifinal round of her home tournament. She finally made her breakthrough when she upset the World No. 1, American Chris Evert in a three-set battle in the semifinals. Just two weeks shy of her 32nd birthday, she then moved on to the first final played between two over-30 players since 1913—and with her 4-6, 6-3, 6-1 win over 32-year-old Betty Stove of the Netherlands, she became the fourth woman in the second 50 years of Wimbledon to win the tournament. (In its first 50 years, a number of British women won, as back then it was less common for foreign players to enter the All-England Club's annual tournament.) Wade credited her victory to having found new control over her on-court temper.

This year's crowd at the All-England Club was, of course, overjoyed to see Andy Murray win his first Wimbledon title and break the British losing streak in men's singles. But in 1977, Wade's victory was no less celebrated: The day after, the Milwaukee Sentinel wrote that Wade had "won her first Wimbledon title at age 31 Friday in front of Queen Elizabeth and a wildly happy, singing British crowd," and that

[h]undreds of fans had slept on the sidewalks all night for standing room. The center court has seen better finals, but nothing quite as emotional. For the crowd, it was the perfect climax to the centenary Wimbledon tournament and an unexpected extra item in the queen's silver jubilee celebrations. They waved union jacks, cheered the queen and Virginia, and sang "For She's a Jolly Good Fellow" as the champion held the silver winner's plate aloft.

At Wade's final match, the Queen was in attendance at Wimbledon for the first time since 1962. She wasn't known to be a fan of tennis, but Wade mused during the tournament that perhaps she could "turn the Queen on to tennis." Alas, maybe not: Though the Queen, dressed in pink and white, came down onto the court to present the trophy to Wade after her historic win, she didn't return to the All-England Club until 2010—when she attended a match between Murray and Finland's Jarkko Nieminen.

Wade mused that perhaps she could "turn the Queen on to tennis." Alas, maybe not: The Queen didn't return to the All-England Club until 2010—for an Andy Murray match.

Murray and Wade's post-match remarks show that there's a distinctly British way to win Wimbledon: politely, flabbergastedly, and a little cheekily. Just like Murray, who apologized to an on-court interviewer today for being unable to remember any of what had happened in the last few points of the match, Wade found herself a little dazed—"I won't get drunk tonight," she told reporters, "I'm already drunk without drinking"—and struggled to maintain a proper British stiff upper lip during the trophy ceremony. Later, Wade said that as she received the silver salter from the Queen, the two women "talked a bit, but I wasn't at my most articulate."

Wade also surprised some who knew her for her modest manners, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

"I looked around the dressing room and I felt this week I was the strongest person there. I had the most guts. I felt," she said fiercely, "it was my tournament and my match."

And like Andy Murray, whose Britishness/Scottishness remains hotly debated (see the Andy-Murray-o-Meter if you've ever wanted tongue-in-cheek updates on Murray's waxing and waning popularity in each region since 2005), Wade was also claimed by two nationalities at the time. Wade had an apartment in New York and played team-tennis tournaments for the New York Apples. But according to a Miami News story from 1977, her heritage (she was the daughter of a former Archdeacon of Durban) and her background (she had a degree in mathematics from Sussex University) signaled that Wade was "British to the core," and seemed "more comfortable sipping tea at the All-England Club than wine at a New York City café."

But on July 1, 1977, Virginia Wade wasn't just enthusiastically embraced as British—she was regarded as a British hero. "There was the queen handing me the trophy, and the people were all cheering and singing. I couldn't believe what was happening," Wade told reporters later. "It was like a fairy tale."

Thirty-six years later, with the British public's joyful embrace of a victorious Murray, the fairy-tale love story between the Championships Wimbledon and U.K. tennis has another happy ending.

Professional Pilots on the San Francisco Crash

Posted: 07 Jul 2013 02:39 PM PDT

Let's say it again: after an airline disaster, it often takes a very long time to figure out exactly what went wrong.

In part that is because in most of the world airline travel is now so extraordinarily safe. Unlike car or motorcycle crashes, or fatalities with small amateur-flown airplanes, first-world airline crashes are now so rare that they usually don't fit a known pattern. Thus the most famous disasters often turn out to be case-of-one tragic instances of many things going wrong simultaneously, in previously unforeseen ways. Patrick Smith's Cockpit Confidential, which I mentioned yesterday, includes a dramatic analysis of the worst-ever airline accident, the collision of two fully loaded 747s on the island of Tenerife in 1977, which stresses the everything-wrong-at-once origin of the crash. (You can also find his account of the crash here.) Also, as evidence comes in over the months and years, hypotheses about a crash's origin can change -- for instance in the much-discussed case of the doomed Air France flight 447.

So: it may take a while to know for sure about Asiana flight 214, though probably less time than in most other cases, and with a higher degree of eventual certainty, because the flight crew (along with most passengers) is fortunately still alive. As we wait to hear what the pilots did, saw, and thought, what's a reasonable range of analyses to consider, without just rolling around in the speculative mire? I've heard from a number of professional pilots, who work from these (apparently) known facts:

The airplane undoubtedly "landed short" of the runway;
The skies were clear, the winds were light, and there appeared to be no challenging weather conditions;
There is no report so far of wind-shear circumstances that might have suddenly pushed the airplane off its intended glide path;
There is no report or evidence so far of engine failure or other mechanical/fuel-flow problems that might have kept the airplane from reaching the runway;
The Air Traffic Control tapes released so far are full of "emergency!" "help on the way!" discussions after the plane's impact, but there appears to be no mention of problems before the plane crashed. And, significantly:
The glide-path indicators for the "Instrument Landing System" on runway 28L, where the plane was headed, had been out of service since mid-June*, because of construction at the airport. This meant that the pilots would not have had a dashboard-instrument indication of the proper path to follow through their descent; they would have to judge with their eyes. In theory that shouldn't matter; every pilot everywhere on earth originally learns to land a plane on a "visual" basis. But it's a complication;
And as an extra complication, runway 28L's PAPI system -- the Precision Approach Path Indicators, a set of red and white lights that indicate whether a plane is too high or low on its final approach -- was also out of service. In normal circumstances, a crew like this would have the ILS glide-path indicator, and the PAPI lights, and their own eyes all as redundant guides for the right path of descent. It seems as if these pilots had eyes only.

Thus we have the hypotheses, which I am sharing because they illustrate the way informed observers weigh the (as yet incomplete) evidence at hand. First, from a reader whose name and background I know, and who has been an Alaska bush pilot and airline pilot with some 23,000 hours of flight experience [a lot]:

I just learned the COMBINED flight time of the three [Asiana] captains in the 777 is about 10,000 hours, according to the airline.

I have more time than that asleep in flight...

They could not estimate a visual approach unaided.

They got low.

They tried to spool up [suddenly increase engine power] but didn't have time. 777 takes 5 seconds to power up, another 5 seconds to correct the sink rate.

They rotated [raised the nose] to stop the sink and got very tail low.

The rest is obvious.

Again: it's possible that this is unfair or mistaken, but the reader has standing to speak and lays out his reasoning.

If you really are interested in details, you could check out PPRuNe. This is a site for professional pilots, whose postings anyone can read. For an example of the nitty-gritty of the discussion, consider this post:

The 777 can catch you out with with what is known as the "FLCH trap."

When you are above the glide slope and need to get down in a hurry Flight Level Change (FLCH) is a useful mode to use. Normally you transfer to another mode like glideslope or vertical speed, or you switch off the flight directors.

However in this situation the glideslope was off the air so the ILS would not have ben selected or armed. If the flight directors were left on and the plane was descending at a high rate in FLCH the autothrottle would have been inhibited and would not have put on power so the thrust levers would have stayed at idle.

If the Asiana was a bit high (quite normal for SFO) then regained the visual glideslope, the rate of descent would have decreased and the speed would have started slowly reducing but with the thrust levers staying at idle the 777 would now be in the same situation as the Turkish 737 at AMS, ie speed decreasing below Vref and not being noticed.

The 777 has autothrottle wake up, ie when the aircraft approaches a stall the power comes on automatically to almost full power. This gives pilots great confidence however autothrottle wake up is inhibited in FLCH.

So 777 pilots will be looking at this scenario and wondering if Asiana were in FLCH with flight directors on, too high, stabilised late and did not notice they were still in FLCH and that the autothrottle was not keeping the speed to Vref plus 5 untl too late.

Just a theory but I think it far more likely than engine failure, radalt failure or autothrottle failure and I suspect when the events are unravelled this will be what has happend.

Let's hear from another PPRuNe pilot, on a compounding factor. I won't explain all the references, but essentially he is explaining why many things could have gone wrong at once. "Lining up the holes" alludes to the image of redundant aviation safety measures as a series of slices of Swiss cheese. Each of them has its weak points, or holes -- but if you lay down enough slices, odds are the holes won't all line up and you'll still have some coverage everywhere:

SFO and their notorious ATC instructed 'slam dunk' visual approaches [in which the planes are kept high, then ordered to descend quickly before landing] from downwind have resulted in so many incidents at our airline that it is a regular item in recurent simulator training.

Throw in the lack of visual or electronic glideslope guidance and the holes are lined up. True, you can set up an LNAV/VNAV profile but this requires a bit of heads down time in the box at a busy phase, not easy unless you are expecting the manouvre.

And from another pilot, in response to the "slam dunk" point:

Well said - I couldn't agree more.

I would agree that as a professional pilot we should of course be more than capable of rising to the challenge of such an ATC imposed "slam dunk" approach - however please consider these factors that could all conspire to affect pilot performance

>a long 10 to 12 hour flight
>middle of the night body clock time
>to an airport that you may be not so familiar with (long haul pilot roster - you may only visit the destination once in two or three years)
>a slam dunk procedure that would be a challenge at the best of times (I bet even the short-haul/ domestic colleagues get it "not quite right" on occasions.

For what it's worth - I am of the opinion that slam dunk approaches for "Heavy" jets like the B777 these have no place at a major international airports.

In a "heavy" jet it's always (in my experience) a challenge to "get down & slow down" and become stabilised on this particular approach at SFO - something that sometimes ATC fail to appreciate.

Throw into the mix this runway allegedly not having any functioning ILS or even visual vertical reference guidance system - then it all adds to the possibility of "an accident waiting to happen."

You can find more at the site if you're interested. Finally, I see just now that Patrick Smith has put up his own analysis, which properly stresses (a) the rarity of airline accidents in general, (b) the likelihood that early speculation will turn out to be wrong, (c) the professionalism, bravery, and skill of the cabin crew in getting so many passengers safely off a burning plane, but also (d) this:

Looking at some of the footage [eg photo at top of this post], I was appalled by the number of passengers who chose to evacuate the burning aircraft *with their carry-on luggage.* We've seen this in several on-the-runway evacuations in recent years. Lugging your carry-ons down the aisle in the middle of an emergency, when a few seconds can mean the difference between life and death, is unpardonably reckless.

Whatever else might prove mistaken in the analyses above, this last point certainly rings true.

* Here is the text of the "NOTAM," or Notice to Airmen, announcing the limited ILS status. The opaqueness of the terminology is unfortunately typical of the Telex-era legacy coding of aviation announcements, but professional pilots would know what it means. In essence it says that at SFO airport the ILS glide path would be OTS WEF -- "out of service with effect from" June 11, 2103:

"SFO 06/005 SFO NAV ILS RWY 28L GP OTS WEF 1306011400-1308222359

CREATED: 01 Jun 2013 13:40:00

SOURCE: KOAKYFYX"

The Atlantic In Paris--Dispatch #2

Posted: 07 Jul 2013 01:15 PM PDT

Dispatch 2.jpg

I went out this morning for a quick run along La Seine. That was fun. There were very few people out, which made it easier. Paris is a city for strollers, not runners. In this small section of the city, everyone seems to be offering a variation on the phrase "And I wasn't even trying."

Women pedal their bikes up the streets, without helmets, in long white dresses; or they whizz past in pink daisy dukes and matching roller skates. Men wear orange pants and white linen shirts. They parler un petit peu then disappear around corners. When I next see them they are pushing porsches up St. Germain, top down, loving their lives. Couples sit next to each other in the cafes, watching the street. There are rows of them assembled as though in a spread from Vogue, or as a stylish display of manequins. Everyone smokes. They know what awaits them--grizzly death, orgies, in no particular order.

I came home. I showered. I dressed. I walked across the way and bought some bread and milk. My wife brewed coffee. We had breakfast. Then a powerful fatigue came over me and I slept till noon. When I woke, my son was dressed. My wife was wearing a Great Gatsby tee-shirt, shades, earrings and jeans. Her hair was pulled back and blown out into big beautiful Afro. We walked out and headed for the RER. My son was bearing luggage. This is the last we'd see of him for six weeks.

It was on the train that I realized I'd gone mad. I started studying French through the old FSI tapes and workbook. I then moved on to classes at Alliance Française. Next I hired a personal tutor. We would meet at a café in my neighborhood. Sometimes my son would stop by. I noticed he liked to linger around. One day he asked if he could be tutored in French. It struck me as weird, but I went with it. In June he did a two-week class--four hours a day. He stayed with my father. He woke up at 6 a.m. to get to class on time, and didn't get back until twelve hours later. He would eat dinner and then sleep like a construction worker. But he liked it. Now I was sending him off to an immersion sleep-away camp--Française tout les jours.

It is insane. I am trying to affect the aggression of my childhood home, the sense of constant unremitting challenge, sans the violence. A lot of us who come up hard revere the lessons we learned, even if they were rendered by the belt or boot. How do we pass those lessons on without subjecting our children to those forces? How do we toughen them for a world that will bring war to them, without subjecting them to abuse? My only answer is to put them in strange and different places, where no one cares that someone somewhere once told them they were smart. My only answer is try to mimic the style of learning I have experienced as an adult and adapt it for childhood.

But I am afraid for my beautiful brown boy.

A few weeks ago I was sitting with my dad telling him how I had to crack down on my own son for some indiscretion. I told my dad that the one thing I wasn't prepared for about fatherhod was how much it hurt me to be the bad guy, how much i wanted to let him loose, how much I felt his pain whenever I challenged him. I felt it because I remembered my own days, and how much I hated being 12. I was shocked to see my dad nodding in agreement. My dad was an aggressive father. I didn't think he was joyous in his toughness, but it never occurred to me that he had to get himself up to challenge us. He never let us see that part of him. His rule was "Love your mother. Fear your father." And so he wore a mask. As it happens, I feared them both.

I told my son this story the day before we dropped him off. I told him that I would never force him to take up something he wasn't interested in (like piano). But once he declared his interests, there was no other way to be, except to push him to do it to death. How very un-Parisian. But I told him that pain in this life was inevitable, and that he could only choose whether it would be the pain of acting or the pain of being acted upon. C'est tout.

We signed in. He took a test. We saw his room and met his room-mate. We told him we loved him. And then we left.

"When I e-mail you," he said. "Be sure to e-mail back so that I know you're OK."

So that he knows that we are OK.

When we left my wife began to cry. On the train we talked about the madness of this all, that we--trifling and crazy--should be here right now. First you leave your block. Then you leave your neighborhood. Then you leave your high school. The your city, your college and, finally, your country. At every step you are leaving another world, and at every step you feel a warm gravity, a large love, pulling you back home. And you feel crazy for leaving. And you feel that it is preposterous to do this to yourself. And you wonder who would do this to a child.

What To Read About the San Francisco Airport Crash

Posted: 06 Jul 2013 08:39 PM PDT

I left Washington as news was still filtering in about the Asiana Airlines short landing/crash at SFO today, and I am composing this while on a flight to San Diego, without knowing the full story -- casualties, causes, contributing factors. Behind that flight-induced veil of ignorance I will say:

- Anyone who wants to know more about airline safety, airline dangers, airline realities, and overall how the world looks to people who know aviation from the inside should read, now, Patrick Smith's Cockpit Confidential. Over the years I've often alluded to Smith's common-sense-yet-informed insights about aviation at his Ask the Pilot site. He builds on those, and expands and combines them, in this book. I love that he can see and describe aviation from an inside and an arm's-length perspective at the same time. (For instance, he is contemptuous of the pompous, "fatty" airline language that substitutes "full upright and locked position" for "upright" and adds "do" as a nonsense "irritating emphatic," as in "We do remind you that smoking is not permitted.") Seriously, if you're tempted to watch the latest tick-tock and speculation about this or other airline mishaps, go read Cockpit Confidential instead.

- Or else -- rather, in addition -- please read The Skies Belong to Us. This is a new book by my friend Brendan Koerner, about an aspect of the 1960s and 1970s that is even harder to believe, in retrospect, than the bell-bottoms and the grooviness. This was a time when passenger airlines were being hijacked practically once a week, often for flights to Cuba. Koerner tells about a plane taken all the way to Algeria. Non-fiction writers always dream of finding the perfect representative tale -- a story that is engrossing in itself and also allows you to make any extra point you're interested in. The true-crime account of one implausible-yet-true case is one of these perfect tales. You will be glad to have read this book -- as none other than Patrick Smith has pointed out.

When I land, I will post this, and then see what the sequelae on the Asiana crash are, after six hours. What was known when I left was that the plane had "landed short" -- but with no idea whether this was because of engine problems, wind shear, fuel-line freezeup, wake turbulence, botched go-around, pilot misjudgment, or whatever other factor. It is remarkable that so many people appear to have made it out; best wishes and sympathies to all affected by this tragedy.

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