In the year 2000, Korean Air took the first steps towards moving from a flight loss rate seventeen times higher than most other airlines, to being presented the Phoenix Award by Air Transport World, in recognition of its transformation to a 5-year spotless record in 2006.
They did it with no changes to flight safety checks, no plane hardware or software upgrades, no increases in pilot training standards and without firing any staff due to incompetency.
Only one change was made, they began to require pilots and crew to exclusively use the English language in transit.
When aeroplanes crash, it is rarely if ever the result of a major technical failure. Nor is it the result of major pilot error, nor is it due to unexpected poor weather. Rather, the following commonalities have been found to exist in the vast majority of plane crashes:
- There is a small (but not insurmountable) technical failure.
- There is a small (but not insurmountable) occurrence of human error.
- The weather is bad (but not so bad that the flight would ordinarily be cancelled).
- The pilot is tired (but not in an overly unusual way)
- The flight is running late by a slight amount of time.
- The plane is being flown by the more experienced and senior pilot, rather than the less experienced, subordinate co-pilot (Yes, you read that correctly)1.
This last point in particular is key to understanding why Korean Air had such a terrible flight loss record. In fact, an examination of world airlines found a correlation between increased flight losses and collectivist, hierarchical cultures, and a much lower flight loss record amongst airlines of individualist, egalitarian cultures.
Airlines, as you would expect, have extremely rigorous processes by which technical equipment and human error are assessed and corrected for. It is mostly only possible for the slightest of errors to occur, either in the technical or human sphere, and these can normally be corrected easily.
Korean Air’s main problem was that the Korean language and culture is such that a supporting staff member, such as the co-pilot on a plane did not feel able to use direct language when speaking to a senior staff member, such as the main pilot. In fact, it was not so much the he didn’t feel qualified to do so, but more that the Korean language has an elegantly layered structure of 6 in-built levels that are each used when speaking to people of differing social standing to oneself.
Under normal circumstances it creates a beautiful dialogue of respect and understanding between those conversing. However, when a Korean co-pilot noticed a small error under adverse conditions (poor weather, late-running flight) and tried to communicate this indirectly through questions, suggestions and hints (as language and cultural customs dictate) to a pilot who was more tired and stressed than usual, they did not always manage to get the message through in a timely or clear enough manner to preserve the flight. The beauty of the Korean language, it seems, may also lead to unforeseen disadvantages in an emergency.
The simple act of changing the language used by the Airline crew to English removed the levels of indirect communication inbuilt between superiors and subordinates in Korean and allowed the co-pilot to communicate directly and clearly with the pilot, saving many plane crashes and countless lives1.
In majority, planes crash because of communication issues, not because of faulty equipment or people.
Now, if you’ve been divorced or felt like it, it’s possible that you’ve compared your marriage to a train wreck or plane crash. And the reasons that marriages fail may not be so different from those explaining plane crashes.
It would be reasonable to suggest that many modern marriages break up over important, but not-insurmountable issues that would be quite fixable if the problem could be delineated clearly and a solution negotiated in a timely manner.
Also, men and women do appear to ascribe to different means of communication, not as a result of heirarchy, but rather, in accordance with the different expressions of God’s character that they embody. And the types of language they use may be comparable to those employed by Korean pilots and co-pilots, or Korean as compared with English.
English is a much more abrupt language, appropriate for managing high-stakes, time-sensitive, intricate arrangements required by flight-control technicians in busy American airports, yet, in doing so, it loses the elegance and subtlety inherent in Korean. Just as with the sexes, both have their strengths and compromises in different areas.
Men tend to be more direct and to-the-point in their language use. Women are more subtle and hint2. When women are communicating with women, this works fine. When men are communicating with men, this works fine. When men and women are communicating with each other about relatively mundane things or issues that are not highly sensitive or emotional, this also tends to go reasonably well.
However, when emergencies or adverse circumstances start to arise, the communication starts to show its limits. Women may take offence when men speak very directly (like I did when I asked Tim if he wanted sex the other day and he said simply “no”.)
Men may totally miss hints towards vitally important issues in the marriage made by women (like Tim did when he fell asleep the last few nights as I tried to preserve some important bonding time by beginning by talking about relatively trivial issues and he promptly fell asleep). This occurs to the point that it is not uncommon for men to be completely blindsided when women request a divorce (around 70% of divorces are initiated by women)3.
In our marriages, we will all experience less-than optimal conditions at some point. We will have technical failures (health issues?), human error (personality clashes?), bad weather (kids, social and employment problems?), we will be frequently tired and running late.
When in adverse circumstances, it seems that hinting, questioning and other forms of indirect language that are not picked up by the other could be fatal to the relationship.
Does this mean that women’s ‘Korean’ communication should be scrapped entirely in favour of men’s ‘English’? Not so.
The above information about plane crashes was brilliantly described in Malcolm Gladwell’s (2008) book “Outliers”,1 where he also broaches the issue of Asian language strengths. The subsequent chapter is dedicated to explaining the superiority of Asian languages in terms of simplifying maths problems as a probable cause of increased Asian competency in mathematics.
So Asian languages, it would appear, may be superior when designing a plane, but have an unintended disadvantage when flying one.
So both kinds of communication are vital for the development and maintenance of the relationship.
As a woman in a relationship, you may feel (as the Korean co-pilots often did) that you have done all you can to communicate the seriousness of the situation to your partner, and they do not seem to care. You may feel like you are ready to wash your hands of the situation.
Just like co-pilots, who are in charge of monitoring all the systems and advising the pilot regarding the best adjustments to make for a successful flight, women tend to perform this role in marriage. Men tend to be more occupied with day-to-day tasks of providing physically for the family, and not the monitoring of the overall conditions of the marriage.
When the plane is going down, while you’ve felt that you’ve hinted plenty, you may not have been clear enough about what is necessary to save the marriage.
The saddest thing to watch is the breakdown of a relationship that neither party really wanted to end, but they feel that the other just didn’t want it enough to understand what was needed.
Ladies Remember: your life is at stake here too, if the plane goes down, you are both on it. Keep revising and revisiting your communication until your point gets through. The pilot does not want the plane to crash, he just does not yet understand the seriousness of the situation.
As a man in a relationship, you may feel that you are operating all the levers necessary to keep the system going, and yet the co-pilot keeps harping on about this trivial warning light that does not seem to be vitally important to the current operation of the aircraft.
Gentlemen Remember: you ignore this information at your peril. Just because you do not see the relevance of this issue right now, does not mean it is not so. By paying attention to the small questions, hints and suggestions of your partner, you may be doing the servicing and minor adjusting that will keep the relationship running smoothly long into the future.
Now is the time to pull up the nose of the plane and get your relationship back to the right altitude, before it is too late.
- Gladwell, M. (2008). Outliers: The Story of Success. United Kingdom: Penguin Books Limited.
- Lippa, Richard. (2008). Sex Differences in Personality Traits and Gender-Related Occupational Preferences across 53 Nations: Testing Evolutionary and Social-Environmental Theories. Archives of sexual behavior. 39. 619-36. 10.1007/s10508-008-9380-7.
- Rosenfeld, M. J. (2018). Who wants the breakup? Gender and breakup in heterosexual couples. D. F. Alwin, F Felmlee, and D. Kreager. (Eds), Social networks and the life course. New York: Springer, 221-43.
little words 