異類之不一樣的成功啟示錄 第125期:飛機失事的原因

The 707 slammed into the estate owned by the father of the tennis champion John McEnroe, in the posh Long Island town of Oyster Bay.

707飛機俯沖向網球冠軍約翰·麥肯羅的私人屬地，

Seventy—three of the 158 passengers aboard died.

飛機上158名乘客中的73人喪生在牡蠣海灣美麗的長島小鎮(zhèn)。

It took less than a day for the cause of the crash to be determined: "fule exhaustion."

經過不到一天時間的調查，事故產生的原因被定義為“燃油不足”。

There was nothing wrong with the aircraft. There was nothing wrong with the airport.

不是飛機的原因，不是機場的原因，

The pilots weren't drunk or high. The plane had run out of gas.

飛行員既沒有酒醉駕駛，也沒有神志不清，只是飛機燃料用盡。

"It's a classic case," said Suren Ratwatte, a veteran pilot with Emirates Airlines, who has been involved for years in "human factors" research,

“這是個經典的案例”，身為阿拉伯皇家航空公司資深飛行員的蘇倫·懷特瓦特說。懷特瓦特曾參與“人為因素”的調查工作達數(shù)年之久，

which is the analysis of how human beings interact with complex systems like airplanes.

該調查主要分析人類與核能源站和飛機這種比較復雜的系統(tǒng)之間的相互影響。

Ratwatte is Sri Lankan, a lively man in his forties who has been flying commercial jets his entire adult life.

懷特瓦特是斯里蘭卡人，他已經50多歲但卻依然精力充沛，自他成年之后就一直駕駛商用飛機。

We were sitting in the lobby of the Sheraton Hotel in Manhattan.

我們一起坐在曼哈頓的謝爾頓酒店大堂里，

He'd just landed an Emirates jumbo jet at Kennedy Airport after a long flight from Dubai.

他駕駛阿拉伯皇家航空公司的大型噴氣式客機剛剛從迪拜飛到了肯尼迪機場，這是一段長途飛行。

Ratwatte knew the Avianca case well.

懷特瓦特十分了解阿維安卡事故，

He began to tick off the typical crash preconditions. The nor'easter. The delayed flight. The minor technical malfunction with the autopilot.

他開始敘述飛機失事的原因：東北風暴、飛機延誤、自動飛行裝置失靈。

The three long holding patterns, when air traffic control required the plane to circle round and round,

三段漫長的候降經歷——空中交通管制要求飛機在空中多次盤旋。

which meant not only eighty minutes of extra flying time but extra flying at low altitudes, where a plane burns far more fuel than it does in the thin air high above the clouds.

這不但使他們在空中多盤旋了80分鐘，而且同高空飛行相比，低空飛行會使飛機燃燒更多的燃料。

"They were flying a sevenohseven, which is an older airplane and is very challenging to fly," Ratwatte said.

“他們駕駛的是707，這種飛機不但很舊，而且很難控制。”懷特瓦特說道。

"That thing is a lot of work. The flight controls are not hydraulically powered.

“它是上一代的飛機，飛行中你需要做許多工作，它的控制系統(tǒng)也不是水力發(fā)電的。

They are connected by a series of pulleys and pull rods to the physical metal surfaces of the airplane.

而是由一系列滑輪和拉桿與機身的金屬表面相連所組成的。

You have to be quite strong to fly that airplane. You heave it around the sky. It's as much physical effort as rolling a boat.

開這種飛機你一定要有很好的體能，在飛行中它很重，需要消耗很大的體力，就好比你在劃船時一樣。

My current plan I fly with my fingertips. I use a joystick. My instruments are huge.

我最近開的飛機可以一伸手就觸到許多操縱裝置，我也用指控桿。

Theirs were the size of coffee cups. And his autopilot was gone.

飛機的儀器都很大，像咖啡杯那么大。他們的自動飛行系統(tǒng)失靈。