A pilot crashed a full passenger jet into the bay, didn't lose his job (2021)

I once ran a stop sign, and nearly hit a car. They pulled up next to me, rolled down their window (I had stopped at my home) and were about to unleash who knows what kinds of profanities at me, and I just said &quot;That was totally my fault. I didn&#x27;t see the stop sign. I&#x27;m sorry.&quot;<p>They stopped dead in their tracks, shrugged and nodded, and left. Owning mistakes is an extremely powerful tool when used correctly.

This was the interesting part for me:<p>&gt; When asked what went wrong, he simply replied, “As you Americans say … I f--ked up.”<p>&gt; Captain Asoh’s frankness and self deprecation helped him preserve his career. Rather than get fired, as was expected, the airline merely demoted him to copilot, before allowing him to work his way back up to captain a few years later. He went on to captain hundreds more flights, all of which landed successfully.<p>&gt; The “I f--ked up” reasoning, or what became more eloquently known in legal circles as “The Asoh Defense” is used to prove that sometimes a frank admission of guilt is the easiest way out of a pickle.

It’s funny how this would simply be an unacceptable answer in a root-cause-analysis. “I fucked up” basically just means “yea, someone else might make the same mistake, nothing to be done to prevent it”.

&quot;...Captain Asoh somehow managed to guide the plane onto the water and into the mud below without a single injury to the 100 adults and seven children on board, beyond a bloody nose.&quot;<p>A+ landing: zero fatalities and your airplane can take-off again on the same day.<p>B landing: zero fatalities.

&gt; Captain Asoh was the last to leave, and returned to the plane after ensuring everyone was safely ashore to gather and return the passengers&#x27; personal belongings.<p>&gt; A language barrier between Captain Asoh, who spoke little English, and his American copilot, Joseph Hazen, was also partially to blame, as the pair attempted to use a new instrument landing system for the first time. But at the NTSB investigation, Asoh chose not to blame any of those factors or make any excuses. When asked what went wrong, he simply replied, “As you Americans say … I f--ked up.”<p>Talk about being responsible for ones actions. This man is a model.

&quot; If the plane had come down in any other part of the bay, such as the 30-foot deep waters to its east or the dry flats to the west, Flight 2 would have either sunk, or likely set ablaze&quot;<p>Wait wait wait, plane fuselages don&#x27;t naturally float? I always assumed they did?

&quot;I f*cked up&quot; is something I&#x27;ve had to say several times in my career as a dev. It&#x27;s in the nature of things.

The copilot had an interesting life [1]. He flew for the CIA during the US’s unacknowledged war in Laos.<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.legacy.com&#x2F;us&#x2F;obituaries&#x2F;seattletimes&#x2F;name&#x2F;joseph-hazen-obituary?id=13282014" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.legacy.com&#x2F;us&#x2F;obituaries&#x2F;seattletimes&#x2F;name&#x2F;josep...</a>

Unrelated other than being an airplane incident, but I recently was reading up on BOAC flight 911[1] while in Japan, and the full story about how many other air disasters occurred to Japan that year, the plane taxiing past the wreckage of the previous day&#x27;s crash, passengers who were on BOTH planes, and the Albert Broccoli connection.... just crazy.<p>Oh and I happened to be on JL2 on Friday, which thankfully landed uneventfully on the tarmac at SFO.<p>1. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;BOAC_Flight_911" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;BOAC_Flight_911</a>

I learned about this while growing up after hearing Jerry Harvey talk about it (mentioned in the article). I actually used to keep a picture of the pilot with the words &quot;we salute you&quot; as a reminder of how to handle mistakes. No one ever got the connection.

This works when you are dealing with an organization that is run by sensible and wise people who are focused on building a better organization by building better people<p>This does not work in places where you are a number, or a cog, or readily replaceable.

&gt; While everyone aboard safely went about their strange day after the crash, the plane was left with $4 million of damage, though it was fixed up and flying again less than 12 months later.<p>Crazy times.

It is a very, very important lesson to learn: how to understand and acknowledge ones failings.<p>The impulse is to defend, as failings are weakness and represent instances of unattained agency. In this day and age, agency is all you&#x27;ve got, most times. One feels the need to protect it at great expense. Have you ever noticed how crap it feels to over-defend something that turns out to be an abundant triviality?<p>So, to have the wherewithal to turn those weaknesses into strengths is an extraordinary human endeavour, and a testament to the strength of human spirit.<p>When people say that there are only material things in life, it will be interesting to consider this story where the moral principles of Captain Kohei Asoh led him to maintain his agency over his life as a pilot by protecting (superlatively), the lives of his passengers, in a material and ethical sense, and admitting the mistakes made in light of actual <i>success</i>.<p>Would the &#x27;I fucked up&#x27; conjecture feel different if he were uttering it from the ashen mess of a death bed, with far worse survivor basis behind the statement?<p>The spirit is clearly composed of decisions, remembered for win or fail. Seems to me, a strong soul prepares for this eventuality, in perpetuity... I have to wonder if Captain Asoh was also, incidentally, a very good pilot.