On July 9, 1982 a Boeing 727 crashed shortly after takeoff from New Orleans International Airport. All aboard were killed plus eight people on the ground, and six houses were destroyed. There was a thunderstorm in progress at the airport as the flight rolled down runway 10. Almost immediately after the airplane lifted off a microburst violently slammed it right back down. Similar-type airplanes had successfully taken off ahead of the 727, and the crew's decision to takeoff in questionable weather conditions seems to have been influenced by this. They must've thought, "If they made it, so can we." They were wrong. One hundred and forty-six people died as a result of their mistake. This is not the only accident of this nature.
Humans are pack animals. Deep down inside of us is thousands of years of conditioning that leads us to believe if other people are doing it, it must be okay for us to do too. This primitive "follow the leader" instinct can lead pilots into dangerous situations if it goes unchecked. In New Orleans that day there were other pilots who decided to takeoff despite the risky weather conditions. When I read this accident report I could almost see the thought bubbles above the crew thinking, "Well, everyone else is doing it." Think of this as subconscious peer pressure. These pilots took comfort in the fact that other aircraft had successfully taken off right before them, and they became falsely reassured that they could do the same. Their pack instincts clouded their decision making and these pilots failed to accurately and objectively assess the risk level associated with the current weather conditions affecting their takeoff. The result was disastrous.
Weather is extremely dynamic. It changes quickly and sometimes unexpectedly. It is not bound by rules and regulations, and no matter how badly we want it to behave a certain way it will never oblige. Don't expect it to. The weather is in charge of us, not the other way around. Just because ten airplanes on approach ahead of you successfully negotiated a windy and turbulent final during a thunderstorm does not in any way suggest that you will be able to do the same. Just imagine you're the only aircraft in flight at that moment and think about what you would do. This will help you manage the hazardous "follow the leader" mentality and make a wise and healthy decision. Objectivity is key. Don't think about the King Air ahead of you that just landed successfully. You're not him, you're you, and the weather Mother Nature has prepared for you may be completely different than the weather the King Air encountered. Thunderstorms especially are a rapidly changing weather phenomenon and can produce extremely dangerous conditions that weren't present a mere sixty seconds earlier. Microbursts, one of the most lethal byproducts of heavy precipitation, can form quickly and unexpectedly, and many airliners have been lost to microbursts over the years because pilots forged their way into dangerous weather because, after all, everyone else was doing it. Sometimes nature is picky and will only choose one aircraft out of a large stack of inbounds to have its way with. The guy before you could've made it, and the guy after you could make it. That means nothing about your circumstances, so eject this piece of information from your decision making process when it comes to questionable weather situations.
I once watched a video recreation of an incident which occurred at the Daytona Beach International Airport involving a formation flight of several general aviation airplanes. The tower cleared the flight to land then watched as the formation leader inadvertently landed on a taxiway parallel to the assigned runway. Each of the other airplanes then followed the leader landing one after another on the same taxiway. The tower tried several times to interrupt the sequence but none of the pilots listened. Clearly these pilots were under the influence of "pack blindness," thinking not for themselves as they should've been but as one big defective group of pilots. This is the same mental phenomenon that leads pilots into dangerous weather instead of objectively and honestly evaluating the current weather affecting their airplane.
Our pack animal instincts must be managed while flying. As aviation hero Richard L. Collins says, "Weather is what you get, not what you expect to get." The more realistic our expectations are, the better prepared we will be to handle the actuality of the circumstances affecting our flight instead of resisting them with futility. And remember, following the leader may lead you directly into the lion's den.
