Piloting Through the Pandemic
For Episode 6 of Reimagine podcast, former Airbus CEO, Tom Enders, and “Miracle on the Hudson” pilot, Captain Sully Sullenberger, discuss how the industry can weather COVID-19, what it will take to make flying safe again for everyone, and what the medical profession can learn from aviation safety.
My first CEO position at Novell was incredibly hard. I had a good friend tell me, “You need something that will distract you to the point that you can’t think about work. Let’s have you learn to fly because if you get distracted, you’ll die.”
And just like that, I started flying, and it worked — my mind was off my work and focused on flying. In many ways, becoming a pilot was a great life lesson about the importance of little details, quick decision-making, and learning how to stay calm and act under pressure.
My piloting experience gave me first-hand insight into the complicated systems and rules involved in aviation that have, over time, made flying the safest form of transportation. Yet the many constraints airlines operate under as businesses have also made me concerned about the future of global air travel as the industry struggles through the pandemic. That’s why I wanted to speak with Tom Enders, former Airbus CEO, and “Miracle on the Hudson” pilot, Captain Sully Sullenberger, on Reimagine.
Airlines are one of the great institutions of global business and connectivity. As Enders shared, quoting Bill Gates, “International air traffic was the first world wide web, and we should not forget that.”
But now the aviation industry is in trouble. It’s very difficult to see how they’re going to get through this crisis unless changes are made and airlines evolve.
It starts with a standardized approach. According to Enders, “The first priority must be that we really arrive at internationally agreed rules for getting back into the air.”
Captain Sully had a similar opinion but with a domestic focus. “One of the biggest failures so far in terms of our air transportation system,” he told me, “is that in [the United States], we have never had a federal face covering mandate — in spite of the fact that many have been calling for that, and that would have been one of the most effective things that we could do.”
But, that’s just the beginning. We truly need to reimagine air travel as we know it, and there won’t be a silver bullet fix.
Captain Sully put the complexity best when he told me:
“We must rely upon a whole panoply of individual actions that, in aggregate, make us all safer. These need to be consistently applied everywhere across the board, so that when passengers begin their travel and they first get to the airport, they know exactly what they must do, know exactly what to expect, and that the process is predictable, consistent, and reliable across the board — no matter which airport they’re using or which airline they’re flying on.”
What might these changes look like? The simplest change might be removing the middle seat from our travel experience.
Captain Sully pointed to research at MIT investigating the relative risk of being on an airplane. “[The research] has found that there is a risk, although it’s not terribly large, that one can acquire COVID-19 from exposure on an airplane in flight. But, if middle seats are kept unoccupied, the risk of contracting COVID is approximately half that if all the seats are fully occupied. I’ll tell you, I’m going to fly on an airplane where the middle seats are kept empty knowing that my chances of catching COVID are half that if the middle seat were filled.”
Additional health and safety updates suggested by Captain Sully included acrylic sheeting to separate people during security screenings, antimicrobial coating on surfaces, and a contract tracing system that would enable travel without the heightened concern of viral spread. And Captain Sully also made the excellent point that we should be implementing a lot of these changes now. “It’s important that we not waste the time that we have while many people are not traveling,” he said, “to take steps now when a lot of airplanes are grounded and maintenance and adjustments could be made.”
Longer-term, technology will become increasingly important for aviation. Advances in artificial intelligence and data analytics should be applied to make air travel more economical, secure, and sanitary. Sometimes, I wonder how quickly we could evolve the airline industry if we had more modern concepts, or the equivalent of Elon Musk and Tesla applied to airlines.
This might seem ambitious, but aviation has been a hallmark of discipline and systems management for decades. In fact, while he had several constructive criticisms for the aviation industry, Captain Sully also suggested the medical community could learn from the detailed systems approach of aviation. He noted, for instance, that there are an estimated 100,000–200,000 preventable medical deaths per year in the U.S. because of system problems such as lack of standardization (and even that could be an underestimate). Aviation can learn from medicine, but medicine can also learn from aviation.
And politicians, Sully noted, could learn from aviation too. He recalled to me the oath he took to become an air force officer and a fighter pilot. “I could recite it now,” he said. “And it was not just a promise that I could decide whether or not to keep. That oath was a sacred solemn vow that I swore and my compatriots swore to uphold at the cost of our lives if necessary. Our elected officials take a similar oath, and we must expect them and demand that they uphold their oaths. And when they don’t, we must hold them accountable.” To hear more, you’ll have to listen to the episode.
Whatever changes come to or from the industry in the near future, we can’t forget the importance of air travel. Airlines have connected our world in countless ways. They’re a bedrock fundamental to so much economic growth. Ignoring the importance of global travel will come at our peril. We’re focused on people staying safe, healthy, and getting back to work. That’s a great thing. But, let’s focus on getting them back on airplanes, too.
