Bookreporter.com: John J. Nance
Interview - March 3, 2000

John Nance, a full time airline captain and aviation consultant, knows a thing or two about planes --- which is one of the reasons why his airplane thrillers ring so true, the other reason is that he's simply a great writer. TBR Senior Writer Joe Hartlaub agrees and was eager to ask the aviation expert about his new book BLACKOUT. Nance explains his take on flying and fills us in on the details of BLACKOUT in this telling interview. Find out from the expert if it's safe to fly...

TBR: Is it becoming more dangerous to fly? And if so, why?

JN: Actually, it's becoming safer to fly --- much safer --- and the statistics prove that. Despite the fact that airline tragedies seem to be increasing in number, the percentage of flights that crash (an infinitesimal number) continues to decrease. The problem is that the overall volume of airline traffic is increasing very rapidly worldwide, which in turn means that if the accident rates remain the same, the number of accidents will increase.

The reasons why it's becoming safer to fly are important... First, the past twenty years have seen a virtual revolution in understanding the main cause of modern airline accidents: human mistake or failure (not pilot error, or professional discretionary error, which is exceedingly rare). We know that professional pilots do not try to make mistakes, but it took us decades to learn that mistakes are inevitable simply because we're imperfect as humans. In other words, pilots --- like all humans --- can misunderstand something, misread something, or miscommunicate something, even though we try very hard to never make such mistakes. The key to accident prevention, then, is realizing that we can't prevent all human mistakes, but that we can build our systems to safely absorb those mistakes that can't be stopped. For example, we know human pilots occasionally misunderstand radioed instructions from air traffic control. No amount of training, no amount of threats from the company, and no amount of intense self-discipline will prevent such misunderstandings from happening every now and then. So how do we prevent a misunderstood instruction from leading to a crash? By expecting such an error, and by training the other pilots to listen in order to catch and correct mistakes. This reality --- using the professional capabilities of the copilot --- led us to completely change the communications hierarchy of the commercial cockpit. Now, instead of an environment in which the captain is God and is addressed only when he or she approves, captains are required to listen carefully to their fellow crew members, and the other pilots are virtually required to speak up if they think the captain may be making a mistake. This discipline is called "crew resource management," and it has literally revolutionized air safety and dramatically reduced the number of human-error accidents.

The second reason for the vast improvement in safety is the increase in economic stability of the airline system, which has led to elimination of most of the fly-by-night pseudo-airlines of the eighties which were trying to operate on the cheap as a direct result of airline deregulation (which has been a total flop, by the way).

One more point. If you fly the main airlines in North America, you're flying at the highest levels of air safety; and you're less likely to get hurt than when taking a shower at home. If you're flying the commuter/regional airlines, the level of safety is slightly lower; but improving rapidly and largely worthy of your trust these days. Internationally there is wild variation. While the major European carriers such as Lufthansa, Air France, British Airways, and many others are at least equal to our North American best in terms of safety (and usually way ahead on service); there are many parts of the world where the airlines and the airline systems are far below what we regard as minimally safe. Asking careful questions and using common sense are your best guide (since no one, including me, can publish a running list of who to avoid without triggering lawsuits). Generally speaking, however, if you don't know the carrier or their safety record, be careful and ask questions. Many third world carriers have a long way to go, as do most of the airlines of the former Soviet Union states.

TBR: BLACKOUT features, among other elements, the return of FBI Special Agent Kat Bronsky, who was introduced in your novel THE LAST HOSTAGE. Do you plan on featuring Agent Bronsky, or any characters from your previous works, in future novels?

JN: That depends entirely on my readers. I happen to be head over heels in love with Kat Bronsky. Kat is a character I created for my novel THE LAST HOSTAGE (1998), and I want her back. She embodies what I value and admire in so many women today: a capable, self-confident woman, smart, innovative, and thoroughly professional, who more than holds her own in a male-dominated world, but without surrendering her femininity. Kat is the perfect blend of sexy and professional, and in BLACKOUT I had the chance to show her at her best, and growing as an FBI agent. However, when and how to bring her back is an open question. Should she take over the next book, or the one after that? Or should she have her own series branching off from my mainstream books? I'm hoping my readers will let me know with E-mails over the next year talktojohnnance. After all, I work for them, and happily so.

As far as other characters making a repeat appearance, that, too, will be dictated by reader response. I do really want Dallas Nielson back, if I can find the right place and time. She's another lady I have great respect for, and she played a pivotal role in BLACKOUT. I'm trying to get Whoopi Goldberg interested in playing her in the movie (or perhaps Oprah), but I'm not supposed to tell you that at this stage.

TBR: It is hard not to hang the title "Renaissance Man" on you as the result of your accomplishments in so many fields. Let us try to take them individually. First of all, you are an attorney specializing in the field of aerospace law. What initially attracted you to that field of practice?

JN: My Dad was a very successful senior international lawyer in Dallas; and although he never tried to steer me to law school, it was something I wanted to do myself. I perceived (correctly, it turns out) that lawyers knew far more about how things worked in this society, and I wanted to know those "secrets." I've kept my law license current; and although I've practiced very little over the years, I've used my legal education incessantly, most recently in the broadcast arena in knowing precisely what I can safely say and not say when I'm on the air trying to explain some occurrence in aviation. I've also kept fairly current in aerospace legal matters because, ultimately, the lawyer plays an invaluable role in fostering safety, which is a main professional focus for me. Unfortunately, I lost my father in 1977, and our plans to open an international law practice together someday never came to be. But I think he'd be happy with the way the legal education he paid for has been used.

TBR: You are also a decorated US Air Force pilot, veteran of the Vietnam War and Operation Desert Storm/Desert Shield, and maintain the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the Air Force Reserves. With respect to the latter, you are recognized as an expert in "human factors flight safety education." Could you please explain to us landlubbers what that is?

JN: Basically, I was one of the officers who helped kick the Air Force into awareness that we needed the same Renaissance in thinking that had swept the airlines: Crew Resource Management and the dismissal of Captain Kirk. Kirk? Okay, that's a Star Trek reference, but it's very appropriate. If you'll recall, in the original 1960s TV series, the captain of the Starship Enterprise that was boldly going all over the place was the old-style commander we used to enshrine as the ideal in commercial aviation --- the military, business, and every other form of command and leadership. Leaders and commanders, like Jim Kirk, were supposed to be omnipotent. Kirk tolerated back-talk from no one (except Spock, of course, who was a walking computer, and Bones --- Dr. McCoy --- who couldn't be silenced). Kirk was far more adept at giving orders than seeking professional guidance and the professional abilities of the various carbon-based units (humans) around him were often unused. The result? He often got it wrong, and the Capt. Kirks of commercial aviation were constantly making hideous mistakes by essentially flying solo in multi-place airliners. Crash after crash in the seventies had, as one of the root causes, a failure of the commander to listen to his crew at a critical moment (or the inability of the crew to be bold enough to make a suggestion to the commander).

In commercial aviation we've learned to fire Captain Kirk and substitute instead a completely different type of commander: one who utilizes all the human intellect and talent (read advice and expertise) of the crew members assigned to him or her. In other words, the airlines of North America now have people trained to emulate Captain Jean Luc Picard of Star Trek-Next Generation in commanding their airplanes. The result has been an opening of the floodgates of professional communication in commercial cockpits that have prevented perhaps scores of crashes, saving many thousands of lives.

But you asked about the Air Force. Interactive cockpits and communicative captains are not the norm for military aviators, and I was one of a host of officers who hammered away at the Air Force to adopt the airline methods of CRM (crew resource management) with accelerating success. While we still lag behind the civilian sector in firing all the Captain Kirks out there, we're making good progress; and the last three years of my Reserve service were spent producing educational video productions on this subject for the commander of the Air Education and Training Command at Randolph AFB, Texas --- some of which are still in use around the Air Force. In addition, I continue to speak to Air Force groups as much as possible advocating this discipline of open communication and teamwork as the most effective preventative for accidents.

TBR: Additionally, you are recognized as an airplane safety advocate, and have appeared in both the electronic and print media as the "go-to guy" on this subject. What, in your opinion, is the major safety problem which the airline industry needs to address at this time?

JN: We're actually doing pretty well, but there are a few worrisome areas, all of them having to do with overcrowding in an attempt to make more money. First, the so-called "seat pitch" (the number of inches of leg room between the front of your coach seat and the back of the seat in front of you) has been reduced to the point of ridiculousness. Certainly from a passenger comfort point of view there is zero efficacy to a seat pitch so tight that a passenger of average size can't lean forward, and there should be equal outrage when the passenger ahead of you reclines and you end up with your nose practically on the top of his or her head. But there is a safety aspect here, too. In an emergency evacuation, the crammed-together seat rows in today's jetliners are a major impediment to getting people safely off the airplane in time. Has anyone tested this? No, because emergency evacuation demonstrations are carefully orchestrated exercises conducted during the FAA certification of new airliners before they enter service; and there are no requirements to go back and recheck just because an airline has tried to add ten more seat rows by reducing the "seat pitch." But there should be! Since safety may be affected, and since the airlines are taking a laissez-faire approach to moving the seats around; it's the responsibility of the FAA to make them prove that these sardine-can arrangements will not impede the ability to meet the original standards.

The second problem currently is that of an antiquated air traffic control system; and too many of us trying to fly in too many airliners, to too many places, in the same airspace, at the same time. The Air Transport Association (the airline trade representative in Washington, D.C.) has done the bidding of their member airlines in trying to convince Mr. and Mrs. America that all the passenger fury over delays is the fault of the FAA's Air Traffic Control System. But they're only partially right. True, the Air Traffic Control system is ten to fifteen years behind in automating critical functions such as the issuance and confirmation of clearances (instructions to pilots), and equally behind in automating many of the functions of guiding air traffic over the nation; but the airlines themselves bear a heavy responsibility for engaging in what I call "Scheduling Fictions:" launching waves of flights into airspace and time periods that they know, as a matter of certainty, cannot accommodate such traffic volume. This is a result of airline deregulation, which began in 1978 and forced the airlines into a life-or-death struggle financially. For instance, there are simply too few controls on airline leaders who would launch thirty flights from DFW airport at essentially the very same time, knowing full well that most of those flights will need thirty minutes or more to even reach the end of the runway, and another fifteen minutes of airborne delays and slowdowns before reaching destination. Such a volley instantly overcrowds the system; but, in the absence of Congress passing laws to alter this practice, the financial realities of a wild west deregulated market will continue to force the airlines to keep on launching flights on schedules which can't be kept.

But is this a safety problem? Yes, because by overburdening the system, you equally overburden fallible human controllers and reduce the margins of safety a bit more with each frenetic wave of overcrowded departures or arrivals. Ultimately, only Congress can solve this problem.

TBR: BLACKOUT contains some of the most memorable edge-of-the-seat reading moments which I have recently encountered. I am referring specifically to the attempt to fly, and land, the Meridian 5 by using teamwork among individuals with little or no experience with piloting. Teamwork is a topic you are well-versed in as a result of your military experience; you also give motivational presentations on teamwork to groups as diverse as the Air Force, medical schools, and utility companies. How did you become involved in motivational speaking?

JN: What I really do is speak about the massive and successful shift in the culture of teamwork in the airline industry with some gut-level, galvanizing examples from real-life that the audience will never forget. I've discovered that many businesses and professions --- including the field of healthcare and medicine --- are hungry for the lessons we now consider standard in aviation: How to break down the barriers to communication, and how to get leaders to listen to their subordinates and coworkers at critical moments in order to reduce the possibility of mistakes becoming disasters. In fact, teaching airline captains to listen to their copilots is in essence no different from teaching surgeons to pay attention to a warning from a nurse at a critical moment. In addition, discarding the so-called "blame culture" is another equally important message from the airline experience: learning to ask the question "What's wrong" instead of the traditional counterproductive focus on looking for someone to punish --- the "Who's Wrong" syndrome. Correcting the performance of complex systems requires moving beyond blame in order to understand and adjust anything that could contribute to a future accident.

On the "motivational" front, I'll admit I'm considered very motivational; but the description makes me nervous because there are some speakers out there whose "motivational message" consists of little more than feel good fluff. The motivational engine of my presentations is my fervent conviction that these lessons from the airline world, if applied intelligently, can give anyone a solid blueprint of how to immediately and markedly improve so many aspects of his or her organization's ability to function safely, and profitably. It's something I dearly love to do because it's uniquely effective, and because it's my performance art.

TBR: Your novels PANDORA'S BOX and MEDUSA'S CHILD were adapted for television. Do you have any other television or movie projects in development?

JN: Absolutely. I can't tell you yet that BLACKOUT is "soon to be a major motion picture," but we're working on it. Additionally, I'm Executive Producer on a project called "AIRQUAKE" which is currently approaching preproduction as a television mini-series, and I have worked on two other movie-of-the-week format mini-series in the past year as aviation technical advisor. Another of my books, PHOENIX RISING, is currently optioned; and all are headed, I hope, for the screen in one form or another --- each with a tiny speaking part for me. PANDORA'S CLOCK (which we filmed in my own Seattle-Tacoma area) was a marvelous experience, and one I want to repeat.

TBR: What do you consider to be the major technological advancement in the field of aviation in the last five years?

JN: That one's easy. Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning Systems. Very seldom can we solve what is essentially a human-weakness, human-failure potential in aviation with a single "black box," but this is an exception. Let me explain. There's a frustrating type of air accident known as "Controlled Flight into Terrain," or CFIT. For the past twenty years, great effort has been expended to end this type of tragedy, in which an otherwise perfectly competent aircrew flies a perfectly good airplane into the ground or a mountainside because they mistook their position and proximity to hazardous terrain. Since the mid-seventies, every commercial cockpit has been equipped with a device called a GPWS, or Ground Proximity Warning System, which was spawned by numerous CFIT accidents in the sixties and early seventies. But GPWS has always had a big flaw: while it can tell you how high you are above the ground and whether the ground is getting closer, it cannot tell you what's looming up just ahead of you. In other words, GPWS just looked down, not forward. Enhanced GPWS, however, combines a digital map of literally every geographic spot on earth with the precise location provided by a Global Positioning Satellite system, considers your speed and heading, and gives you up to a full minute's warning that you're on a collision course with something ahead (such as a hill or mountain or ridge line). This one instrument, when installed on all airliners, will essentially eliminate the CFIT accident; because, regardless of your mistake as a pilot, the black box will give you a warning in time to gain altitude or change direction and stay clear of any "cumulo-granite" (an old, flip aviation reference meaning hard, unyielding ground).

TBR: And what one technological advancement in the field of aviation would you like to see take place in the next five years?

JN: Something the space program has had for literally thirty-five years: Telemetry. Today we still verbally pass instructions and answers and all other information between the air traffic controllers and pilots on a single radio channel at a time. This is 1940s technology, for crying out loud! And, there are only so many words that can be spoken on a single channel in a given interval of time. Almost all our radio transmissions these days are made under extreme time pressure; and the greater the speed of speech, the greater the number of errors and the corresponding potential for a misunderstanding to lead to a mistake, that in turn could lead to an accident. The solution is simple: all clearances and instructions should come off a cockpit printer in writing, passed at the speed of light through telemetry radio transmissions utilizing silicon-based computer capabilities to triple-check the accuracy of each message. That one change --- which is coming far too slowly --- will almost eliminate a wide variety of mistakes.

TBR: Are you presently working on a novel or nonfiction book?

JN: Yes to both. My next major novel, which will release in the spring of 2001, is ready to go in terms of my plot and characters; and I'll be starting the writing phase in a few months. In the meantime I'm continuing work on a fascinating nonfiction story about one of the most amazing gentlemen I've ever met: a man who became a billionaire and did so without savaging anyone, a fellow with a heart as big as Texas who has weathered a lifetime of disappointments and challenges with a steadiness and grace that are remarkable.

TBR: Could you describe your writing discipline when working on a book?

JN: Yes. You sign the contract, you have to write the book! Seriously, I'm always amused by those writers who would have us believe that they're at their word processor at precisely 5 A.M. every morning to write precisely three hours and how ever many minutes, etc., etc. Life isn't like that, nor is writing --- at least not for me. While the idea of going to a beautiful cottage on a wind-swept beach and just writing for months on end with no interruptions is one of those periodic fantasies we writers all have (although some writers' fantasies stray to mountain cabins and blondes from Victoria's Secret); the reality is that I mostly write in my office at home in University Place, Washington, and discipline myself by requiring myself to produce a minimum of ten pages per day (spacing 1.5) when I'm in what I call a "writing phase." Sometimes I don't produce the minimum ten pages; but some days the story flies (no pun intended), and I rack up twenty to twenty-five pages. So the average is ten. Interestingly enough, those multipage days need the least editing, because they represent the parts of a story where my engagement is so total, you couldn't interrupt me if you tried. By the way, when writing BLACKOUT, most of the work was done in the cabin of our company airplane while it sat in the hangar. (We were remodeling my home and office at the time and it was the perfect getaway, although I had to rig a small heater and coffee pot to make it comfy through November and December of 1998). For years I've reassured people that I didn't write my novels in an airplane, so now I have to modify that assurance: I don't write in the cockpit. I was in the cabin. And it was safely on the ground.

And then there are the "New York Times" days. That expression refers to an old journalism/newspaper story attributed to some long-gone writer at the Times who had always been told that when he had "writer's block," he should insert a clean piece of paper and type "The;" and everything else would follow. So, as the story goes, one morning when he was stumped for something to write for his daily column, he inserted the requisite piece of paper and wrote the requisite "The," then put on his coat and went downstairs to spend the day at a bar. At 5 PM he returned, sat at his typewriter (an old Underwood, I imagine), and after the "The" he added: "hell with it!" and went home. There are such days (minus the bar).

TBR: Who are your literary influences?

JN: Great question. I was very privileged to know James Michener, and to a certain (and important) extent, to be mentored by him at a few critical points in my career. Jim, you see, literally changed my life and perception of life with HAWAII and CENTENNIAL. I attended the University of Hawaii for one year because of his book and the sweeping, magnificent scope with which he brought the islands' past and present to life. While I transferred back to my more native Southern Methodist University in Dallas after my freshman year, the University of Hawaii --- and that pivotal coming-of-age year on Oahu --- were major formative factors in how I view the world (I learned to fly out there, for instance, got my first major job as a broadcaster, founded a coffee house, learned to surf, joined a folk group, and we won't get into the dating thing. My mother might read this). Years later, having always wanted to be a writer someday, Jim Michener's CENTENNIAL (a sweeping multigenerational work set in northeast Colorado) opened my eyes to an entirely new reality: the hidden story behind the mundane facade. Here was an area of real estate I had long regarded as flat and uninteresting (in family trips to and from Estes Park, Colorado), but suddenly it burst to life, vibrant with human history, simply because of the way he wrote about it. Many years later as an airline pilot for Alaska, and having (at that time) published two best selling nonfiction books (Splash of Colors and Blind Trust), I was lucky enough to spend a day with him in Sitka, Alaska, where he was working on his novel about the 49th state. Of the many pearls of wisdom I gathered that day, the most important concerned CENTENNIAL. "I have always taken pride, " Jim said, "...in taking the ordinary and making it extraordinary on paper." And he did just that. Not all his books were as stellar, but he was in a class by himself, and I still recommend to wannabe writers that they study his unparalleled ability to compress a story, as well as his economical use of the language.

There are others, of course, who I read and enjoy and learn from. The classics include likes and dislikes (love Fitzgerald, despise Conrad, still don't understand Hemingway). But among current writers, my favorite for just the sheer joy of his linguistic indulgence is Pat Conroy. Despite the fact that Pat keeps trying to kill his father off in each book, the lyricism of his writing is a perennial joy, and I look forward to being able to tell him that in person someday (our paths have yet to cross).

TBR: What are you reading now?

JN: Why, an incredible new thriller called BLACKOUT, of course. I thought you'd never ask! Seriously, I'm reading a new book by my old friend Bob Serling, a master of aviation writing (and Rod Serling's brother) entitled STEEL RAILS AND SILVER WINGS, to be published later in the year. I'm working through several other novels as well; but I have little time to read as much as I'd like since there is so much to do, and miles to go, as Robert Frost said so well.

TBR: And finally, what advice would you give to aspiring writers?

JN: Well, first, please forgive the "wannabe" reference above if you're a serious student of the craft. If your heart demands that you write regardless of economics, then write what you want. But, if your financial interests also demand that you seek remuneration for your efforts, then learn the basic business realities of writing today. It's a far different business than just fifteen years ago, and one that demands different things of you in return for financial success. There may be a few critics and university professors out there searching for the great American novel, but no mainstream publishing houses have any rational mechanism to discover such a beast, let alone publish and promote it (in the absence of a movie deal with Robert Redford or someone in Hollywood to wag the dog and promote the book from the movie). What the reading public demands is entertainment, and it is the writer's responsibility to give great value on that level as well as incorporating those elements which are important to the writer and his or her muse, all of which must be economically viable to a targeted market. It sounds depressing, but the good news is the publishing world is always looking for the next overnight success that took fifteen years to happen. Do your homework, pay your dues, and never give up. (Also, remember the three basic rules: Get an agent, Get an agent, and Get an agent). And, once you're published, never forget for a second who's paying your salary and making you a hit: Your reader --- your customer. Be faithful to your readers, give them an ever improving product with the respect and appreciation they deserve, and they'll stick with you.

TBR: How can your readers find out more about you?

JN: I maintain my own web site, www.john-nance.com, and try to update rapidly information on late-breaking aviation stories when you see me on ABC or Good Morning America.

(c) Copyright 2000, The Book Report, Inc. All rights reserved.

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