JANUARY 27, 2025 – Each evening after I post to my blog, I spend a few minutes reviewing my FB “feeds” and “reels” feature skiing, classical music, Neil deGrasse Tyson talking physics and . . . drum roll, drum roll, barrel roll . . . airplane takeoffs and landings. Among the latter I also hear from a Danish pilot who analyzes airliner crashes and “Captain Steeeve” [sic], an American commercial pilot. The Danish guy is unbelievably detailed and experienced. “Captain Steeeve” is more laid back and reassuring. He’s smart, articulate, humorous, and above all, experienced. You get the feeling that he definitely has the chops for extraordinary airmanship of the level displayed by Captain Sully in the latter’s “miracle on the Hudson” after the birdstrike on his climb out of LaGuardia.
In one of Captain Steeeve’s recent videos he started off with, “People—friends, people I hang out with—ask me if I’ve ever had any scary episodes flying. I tell ’em, yeah, I did have a couple of scary episodes back when I was flying for the navy. One was particularly scary . . .”
He proceeded to describe a hair-raising landing in the P-3 Orion anti-sub plane he was piloting on a practice mission. The story rang a bell for me, since the base where he was stationed was just a few miles from my college campus in Brunswick, Maine. He commanded (sat in the “left seat”) of the four-engine turboprop Lockheed aircraft, which carried a full complement of live ordnance. They took off and headed for their assigned practice target area out over the Atlantic, but before they reached it, deteriorating weather forced them to scrub their mission and return to base. A Nor’easter was working its way up the coast of New England, and by the time the plane reached Brunswick, near hurricane-force winds and torrential rain were roaring over the base. After bouncing around pretty severely in the turbulence, Captain Steeeve banked the P-3 around for the approach. On final, the plane broke through the low swirling cloud deck and soon thereafter touched down on the runway. The problem was—the runway was so inundated, the plane started hydroplaning. He threw the reverse thrusters into play but that caused the plane to slide like a car braking on “black ice.” Again, to remind the reader, the plane had a full load of ordnance and nearly full fuel tanks. He shut of the thrusters and tried the brakes, “but nothing,” he said. “They did nothing.” He tried every trick in the book and not in the book to slow the aircraft—ultimately, he said, he shot “an arrow prayer to God.” His co-pilot called out the remaining distance of the runway. With just 1,000 feet to go, the brakes began to kick in, but their speed was so great, Captain Steeeve was afraid they wouldn’t stop before the end of the runway.
“We finally came to a stop,” he said, “exactly one foot from the end of the runway.”
(The next time I experience a bit of turbulence when flying in an Airbus 319 over the Great Lakes (typical for flights between MSP and LGA or BDL), I’ll remind myself, “At least we’re not on an airplane loaded with fuel and live ordnance, trying to land in a hurricane.”)
Beyond the obvious, at least two other remarkable things struck me about Captain Steeeve’s story. First, when answering the question, he didn’t say, “Oh, yeah, I’ve had more scary moments than I can keep track of. One of the many, however, occurred when I was in the navy . . .” Given his age (late 50s or early 60s?), Captain Steeeve probably has tens of thousands of hours of flying experience. The fact that he’d had just “two scary episodes,” both in military planes, underscored the statistical safety of commercial flight. Second, given the amount of training required of pilots, not to mention the training of aircraft mechanics, air traffic controllers and yes, government inspectors—in other words, given their collective expertise—we the flying public can fly millions upon millions of miles aboard modern airliners and eat, drink, snooze, read, watch movies, visit with the person sitting in the next seat, and play games on our laptops, but not have to worry about flight safety.
In his next video, Captain Steeeve talked about the inside of the cockpit of a modern commercial aircraft. As he explained things amidst the dizzying number of knobs, levers, buttons and switches, my mind shifted to a political analogy—and a pet peeve of mine: the denigration of expertise and government technocrats.
With expanding frequency in recent years and culminating with the new regime of “disruptors,” castigation of experts has become accepted political practice; prime examples include Dr. Fauci (medicine – immunology) and Dr. James Hansen (climatology), whose scientific knowledge and advocacy conflict with short-term political ambitions and coordinate agendae. This dangerous trend is analogous to vilification of airline pilots because of weather delays or concerns arising from a pilot’s pre-flight “walk around” outside the aircraft. Personally, I’d never want to fly aboard a plane piloted by a non-expert who promises a sooner departure and faster flight by ignoring all FAA safety rules. Or even more to the point, for an operation on my body I wouldn’t fly to a country where surgery is dirt cheap—mostly because there is no regulation or licensure of doctors and nurses.
And all those buttons and switches in the cockpit. They reminded me of all the numberless technocrats across all government agencies. Just because I, a non-aviator, knows nothing about any of those buttons and switches doesn’t mean that they have no purpose. Moreover, I’d bet good money that if someone in a purging rage should take a ballpeen hammer to them to “gain efficiency and save money,” something bad would likely happen to the plane once it left the gate. I wouldn’t hedge my bet just because the “someone” looks good on TV or is a billionaire out to please his trumpeting liege. Likewise, because I know little to nothing about experts who work in the Department of Interior doesn’t mean those experts are wrong, unproductive or unnecessary.
What’s outrageous to me is that so many people can be so naïve as to think (a) most government technocrats and bureaucrats are “a waste” and a drag, and therefore (b) we can solve the government’s growing budget deficit by a “DOGE” approach and increase GDP growth by “getting government out of the way.” This isn’t to say waste and inefficiency don’t exist within government institutions. Of course these traits exist—as they do in any organization.
By way of personal background . . . I used to work for two large bank and several large law firms. All were very profitable—and all were also very wasteful and inefficient in one regard or another. In some instances, waste could be measured objectively: for example, printing draft documents on one side vs. two. Other cases were more subjective, such as providing box lunches to incentivize attendance of an important but optional lunch-time meeting.
Expertise was just as critical to efficiency as it was to prosperity of the enterprise. When I managed a business group at the bank, I observed executives who “looked the part” but functionally were certifiable buffoons. Their need to justify their positions (and compensation) often resulted in directives that had their minions scurrying this way and that on the most ridiculous missions—mostly to burnish the executive’s image as an “action-oriented leader.” Usually they had a knack for snagging a promotion before their failures were widely exposed.
Experts aren’t fallible. Every so often, a pilot or a surgeon, a licensed plumber or a licensed electrician or a seasoned CEO of a public company makes a mistake. Also, in most any field of endeavor . . . research grows, knowledge expands, conclusions change. A healthy dose of skepticism is good—provided it’s based on more than a groundless conspiracy theory or a well promoted get-rich-quick scheme. What’s found traction in our political culture, however, is an increasing political drumbeat that is anti-expertise, anti-government, driven by the assumption or default position that experts aren’t expert and government is bad because it’s government. This trend is most manifest among Trump’s cabinet members. In nearly every instance, the selection process was the antithesis of a meritocracy. Applicable expertise and experience were non-existent. Deciding factors were physical appearance, “disruption-for-the-sake-of-disruption” credentials, and unwavering loyalty; billionaire status was icing on angel cake.
Yank highly trained pilots out of the airliners and rip the switches out of the cockpit and it won’t be long before bad results ensue. Eliminate expertise from government leadership and cast out technocrats, and it won’t be long before critical government services crash and burn.
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© 2025 by Eric Nilsson
