Cancelled Flights and Codaphobia

George Rebane

This week’s cancellation of over three thousand flights for safety inspections is a political flap where the FAA is over-reacting to Congress accusing it of being too cozy with the airlines.  What makes it all possible is the established public mentality of codaphobia, now nationwide and growing in direct proportion to the country’s innumeracy rate.

Several years ago I was teaching an upper division/graduate critical thinking course to journalists and media producers called ‘Society and Media’.  In the course we covered ways that the journalistic media select their stories.  One prominent category was to promote and then exploit an unreasonable fear of rare events.  In order to facilitate discussion I named that kind of fear ‘codaphobia’ or literally ‘fear of tails’.

Why tails?  Well the occurrence of events like accidents, major storms, falling off a swing, and getting cancer are random events described by probability distributions such as the famous bell curve.  The events under the hump occur most frequently and the ones to either side out under the tails occur less frequently.  And the ones way out there in the tails are really rare.  Most probability distributions have at least one tail that characterizes how rare certain events described by the distribution are. Codaphobia served our discussions well since it had all the related terms like codaphobe, codaphobic, and so on.  And since then its utility in talking about our society has grown.

Over the last few decades our nation has developed an advanced case of codaphobia, due, I suspect, primarily to our love of tort laws and litigation that absolve us of responsibility.  Suing the bejeezus out of each other has become a cross between a national pastime and a get-rich-quick lottery – for retirement planning winning a good lawsuit beats that iffy social security any day.  We are taught be codaphobic about things ranging scalding coffee in the crotch to our little darlin’ bumping his head on a park teeter-totter. The codaphobes among us demand to be shielded from the psychological trauma of schoolyard name-calling to super-sized hamburgers.  And legions of politicians and lawyers are standing by to legislate and litigate us to whatever level of security we seem to demand.

So now hundreds of thousands of people are mad at the airlines for cancelling flights so that they can check the orientation of retention clips on some wires in the right wheel well of the MD-80 jetliners.  This alleged safety infraction was the quickest way that the FAA could show Rep James Oberstar, Democrat Minnesota, that the agency is serious about maintaining the safety of air travel (with more such demonstration in the coming weeks).   Oberstart, chair of the House Transportation Committee, is not to be put off easily with some simple inspections that shut down a major part of our transportation grid.  He is now threatening the federal takeover of the airline industry.

The mainstream media are not telling the public very much about how idiotic this would be.  The nearby chart shows the relative safety of air travel versus taking your chances in the family bus.  Since airline deregulation in the 1970s every measure of air travel has improved markedly.  This includes air fares, number of flights, cities served, choice of carriers, and, of course, safety. 

The MSM will not tell you that under deregulation air travel safety has improved over eightfold of what it was during the regulated years – 1.984 fatalities per billion miles flown in 1978 versus 0.230 fatalities in 2000-2005 interval (National Transportation Safety Board).  Now suddenly the politicians and bureaucrats along with their MSM trumpets are trying to convince us that it is only the heavy hand of government that keeps the skies friendly – that today the competing airlines suddenly have no more incentive to continue making their flights safer with each passing year.

But on our highways we are selectively codaphiles as we sanguinely accept over 40,000 deaths (and countless more maimings) per year.  Consider what would happen to this death rate were government re-regulation to increase fares to their former levels.  It is estimated that 15% to 20% of people could then no longer afford to fly and would hit the roads instead.  Oberstar and his fellow regulators would then cause another six to eight thousand annual fatalities and, easily, double the number of injuries.  But then, everybody wins.  More regulations, more bureaucrats, more lawsuits, more lawyers, more campaign contributions, … will the celebrations ever stop!?

And this is just one of innumerable areas where our nationally promoted, publicized, and managed codaphobia gives rise to the ongoing ratcheting of our rights.  Innumeracy is a silent plague over the land.

Comments

[Jeff Pelline]

Hmmm. Let's bring some facts to the dialogue. For example that pesky USAToday, reporting that air travel is safer than ever. Shame on them!
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-06-29-air-safety-cover_x.htm

(A Google search will turn up dozens of similar stories). I think that's an old saw George, propagated by some folks that could use a refresher course into the current state of the media.

[chip]

The old saw can still sing a salient song... But I think Jeff has missed the point. If you look at the media this past week it was more about PERCEPTION that there's a problem with the airlines. Unfortunately, I suspect it's about POLITICS and the airlines. There are those close to the FAA advocating it's complete shutdown and rebirth to eliminate the dysfunctional behaviour.

Too easy a platitude, but pertinent: "Most people only do what's in their own best interest". That goes for FAA, politicians, and most editors.

[Jeff Pelline]

No, I get it. You're turning a safety issue into a political issue. And and old saw at that, dating back to Ronald Reagan. That spells out of touch to me.

[chip]

Yes. It is about politics, but George's salient point is the media reporting on the tails...

I venture to say that if we took a national, state, and county survey about airline safety, based on the last weeks media coverage, that the majority would say travel is not as safe.

My observation of the mainstream-media [yes, a gross generalization] last week was that coverage was not based on the heart of the matter and substantiated with facts as George pointed out, but it was based on an emotional level of; "It's damn inconvenient I had to spend the night in the airport", "I will never fly American Airlines again", "I'm in a wheelchair and they said I had to go to the airport to change my flight", "how nice, the airlines gave me complimentary toothpaste, razor, and comb", "We should disband the FAA", "Three airlines in bankrupcy", etc.

But, shouldn't "the media", a staff member of TheUnion (representing TheUnion or not), constrain their comments to TheUnion's forum? I think the PERCEPTION is TheUnion has more clout.

[Jeff Pelline]

Thanks "chip" but no. There's nothing like hands-on experience. Mine happens to include journalism and writing about the airline business for a decade. We need to do a better job of embracing experience our community. It leads to informed commentary.

[chip]

Jeff (even as the editor of the only newspaper in W. Nevada County), you are probably much smarter, perhaps wiser, a better debater, and obviously more erudite than my experience this week flying through Chicago and Cleveland airports... But after 15 years in high-tech journalism as a technical editor for both Ziff-Davis and International Data Group (IDG), the two largest privately held technical publishing firms in the United States until the last few years, I disagree with you.

While your experience in journalistic airline reporting I can not dispute, I think your experience in the community portrayed through your journalism is not conducive to our community on many levels -- evidence herein.

You highlight opinions of off-based facts, changing the dialog, claiming twice that comments are out-of-touch, your expertise and experience, and laced with sarcasm. Where's the constructive dialog?

Totally off-base from George's commentary -- but perhaps the blogosphere is in some miniscule way a threat to journalistic professionalism and expertise, opposed to the novice and uniformed populace...? In some facets I would might even agree, but the community is really more valuable than any one individual or media outlet. Please, take a deep breath. Have a constructive dialog for the sake of your and our sanity.

[Jeff Pelline]

"chip": i think my discussion was pretty constructive, providing some specific examples to the issue at hand. i certainly didn't get off subject or get personal like you did. it's OK to agree to disagree. anyway, it certainly seems like a no win exercise: i'll stop reading and commenting. i guess being the editor of the local newspaper (even though i didn't bring up any of this in the discussion) means you lose some rights as a citizen.