Daily Lesson from Life 24 March 2009

"Italy convicts crash pilot who paused to pray

Pilot prayed instead of taking emergency measures before crash-landing his plane, killing 16. -Tue, Mar 24, 2009 Reuters

PALERMO (Reuters) - A Tunisian pilot who paused to pray instead of taking emergency measures before crash-landing his plane, killing 16 people, has been sentenced to 10 years in jail by an Italian court along with his co-pilot. The 2005 crash at sea off Sicily left survivors swimming for their lives, some clinging to a piece of the fuselage that remained floating after the ATR turbo-prop aircraft splintered upon impact.


A fuel-gauge malfunction was partly to blame but prosecutors also said the pilot succumbed to panic, praying out loud instead of following emergency procedures and then opting to crash-land the plane instead trying to reach a nearby airport.

Another five employees of Tuninter, a subsidiary of Tunisair, were sentenced to between eight and nine years in jail by the court, in a verdict handed down on Monday.

The seven accused, who were not in court, will not spend time in jail until the appeals process has been exhausted."

An interesting story, amusing even if not for the fatalities involved due to (some may argued it won't make a difference) the pilot's inaction to follow the emergency procedure to land at a nearby airport instead of crash landing at sea!

Lessons for me are:

1. you can never trained enough for the ultimate emergency! While to panic is natural but to do so by a trained person who has life and death responsibilities cannot be condoned by his or her fellow human being. It is a bit harsh but then who is to explain to the dead that they could have survived had the pilot not 'panicked'?;

2. that the pilot and co-pilots and others are not Italians will invite the question of: would they have been jailed if there were Italians? Such questions are also natural as countries and races are involved. These topics are always sensitive. As leaders we need to be acutely aware of the implication. In this case, there appeared to be no riot or demonstration to protest unfair and biased treatment!;

3. faith and religion are emotional thing. The pilot and co-pilot and others who were sentenced to jail probably will not understand why they were punished when one of them merely turned to their religion when in the most desperate situation. I am not sure if the judge(s) has/have considered the sensitivity. It is obviously that the decision is based on rationality instead of emotional consideration. Here lied the key difference when people use different values and approaches to decide, the conclusions can be very different!

May the jailed personnel find peace in there.