Gladwell-ChokingPanic

ing out of the dive .O n ly now did I fe e lthe full force of the G-load, p u s h -ing me back in my seat. “You feel noG-load in a bank,” La n g ew i e s che said.“T h e re’s nothing more confusing forthe uninitiated.”I asked La n g ew i e s che how mu chl onger we could have fall e n .“Within fives e c on d s ,we would have exceeded thelimits of the airp l a n e, ” he re p l i e d , b yw h i ch he meant that the force of t ry -ing to pull out of the dive would haveb roken the plane into pieces. I look e da w ay from the instruments and askedLa n g ew i e s che to spira l - d i ve again, t h i stime without telling me.I sat and waited.I was about to tell La n g ew i e s che thathe could start diving anyt i m e, w h e n ,s u d d e n ly, I was thrown back in mych a i r. “We just lost a thousand fe e t ,”he said.This inability to sense, e x p e ri e n t i a ly, lwhat your plane is doing is what makesnight flying so stre s s f u l . And this wasthe stress that Kennedy must have fe l twhen he turned out across the water atWe s t e rly, leaving the guiding lights ofthe Connecticut coastline behind him.A pilot who flew into Na n t u cket thatnight told the Na t i onal Tra n s p o rt a t i onSa fe ty Board that when he descendedover Mart h a’s Vi n ey a rd he looked dow nand there was “nothing to see. T h e rewas no hori zon and no light. . . . Ithought the island might [have] suffered a power failure .” Kennedy wasn ow blind, in eve ry sense, and he mu s th a ve known the danger he was in. H ehad ve ry little experience in flyi n gs t ri c t ly by instru m e n t s . Most of t h etime when he had flown up to theVi n ey a rd the hori zon or lights hads t i ll been visible. T h a t s t ra n g e, final sequenceof m a n e u vers was Kennedy’sf rantic search for a cl e a ring in the haze .He was trying to pick up the lights ofM a rt h a’s Vi n ey a rd , to re s t o re the losth o ri zon . B e tween the lines of the Nati onal Tra n s p o rt a t i on Sa fe ty Board’s repo rt on the cra s h , you can almost fe e lhis despera t i on :About 2138 the target began a right turnin a southerly direction. About 30 secondsl a t e r, the target stopped its descent at 2200feet and began a climb that lasted another 30seconds. During this period of time, the targ e tstopped the turn, and the airspeed decre a s e dto about 153 KIAS. About 2139, the targ e tleveled off at 2500 feet and flew in a southeasterlydirection. About 50 seconds later,the target entered a left turn and climbed to2600 feet. As the target continued in the leftt u rn, it began a descent that reached a rate ofabout 900 fpm.But was he ch oking or panick i n g ?H e re the distinction between those tw ostates is cri t i ca l .Had he ch ok e d ,he wouldh a ve reve rted to the mode of e x p l i c i tl e a rn i n g. His movements in the cock -pit would have become mark e dly slow e rand less flu i d .He would have gone backto the mech a n i ca l ,s e l f - c onscious applicat i on of the lessons he had first re c e i ve das a pilot—and that might have beena good thing. Kennedy n e e d e dto think,to con c e n t rate on his instru m e n t s , t ob reak away from the instinctive flyi n gthat served him when he had a visiblehori zon .But instead, f rom all appeara n c e s ,he panick e d . At the moment when heneeded to remember the lessons he hadbeen taught about instrument flyi n g,his mind—like Morph ew’s when shewas underw a t e r — must have gon eb l a n k .Instead of rev i ewing the instrume n t s ,he seems to have been focussedon one question : Wh e re are the lightso f M a rt h a’s Vi n ey a rd? His gyro s c o p eand his other instruments may wellh a ve become as invisible as the peri pheral lights in the underwater-panic expe ri m e n t s . He had fallen back on hisi n s t i n c t s — on the way the plane f el t—and in the dark , o f c o u r s e, instinct ca nt e ll you nothing. The N.T. S . B . re p o rts ays that the last time the Pi p e r’s wingsw e re level was seven seconds past 9:40,and the plane hit the water at about9 : 4 1 ,so the cri t i cal period here was lessthan sixty secon d s . At tw e n ty - five secondspast the minute, the plane wastilted at an angle greater than forty - fived e g re e s . Inside the cockpit it wouldh a ve felt norm a l . At some point, K e n-nedy must have heard the rising windo u t s i d e, or the roar of the engine asit picked up speed. A g a i n , re lyingon instinct, he might have pulled backon the stick , t rying to raise the noseo f the plane. But pulling back on thes t i ck without first leve lling the wingson ly makes the spiral tighter and thep roblem worse. I t’s also possible thatKennedy did nothing at all ,and that hewas fro zen at the con t ro l s ,s t i ll fra n t i-ca lly searching for the lights of t h eVi n ey a rd ,when his plane hit the water.9 0 THE NEW YO R K E R, AUG UST 21 & 28, 2000