Turn of phrase

"Ground shyness" is the term used by Tom Curran, a Federal Aviation Administration safety inspector, to describe the tendency of pilots to pull up in a stall, rather than unloading the airplane and lowering the angle of attack to regain lift.

Curran was the first officer in the 1993 crash of a DC-8 freighter at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. This was one of the first cases in which the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) cited pilot fatigue as a major contributing factor in the stall during a steep turn onto final approach. Curran recounted the experience at the NTSB Academy fatigue symposium, illustrating the "can do" attitude of pilots, the corporate culture to accomplish the mission (or face demanding questions), and how people are highly subjective - and inaccurate - in assessing their state of fatigue (see ASW, March 22).

In this clearly fatigue-related accident, which all three crewmembers fortunately survived, the operative expression "tired and pushed" comes to mind. As Mark Rosekind of Alertness Solutions observed of this accident, "The entire flight crew displayed cumulative sleep loss, operated during an extended period of continuous wakefulness, obtained sleep at times in opposition to the circadian clock time for sleep, and the accident occurred in the [late] afternoon window of physiological sleepiness."