By David Futrelle
A lot of people are pretty impressed with Tammie Jo Shults, the pilot who guided Southwest Airlines flight 1380 to a safe landing in Philadelphia on Tuesday after one of the plane’s engines exploded in mid-air, displaying a remarkable calm in the face of potential disaster in the audio recordings of her conversations with air traffic controllers that have gone viral on YouTube.
But not everyone is impressed. If you pick your way through the comments on the Daily Mail about the incident, you will find, alongside the hosannas, more than a few comments from disgruntled men angry that Shults has been declared a hero for “just doing her job.” Some Mail readers aren’t even sure she did that.
“A woman pilot?” one skeptic asked. “I don’t think so, bet she had a man in there helping, advising on procedure, doing the difficult bits.”
Another Mail reader insisted that Shultz simply couldn’t have been piloting the plane, because according to him it would have been against regulations. “I am a qualified commercial pilot and can advise you all that female pilots are prohibited from driving planes in emergency situations,” he declared. “The Global FAA does not allow it because women are prone to hysterics and cannot keep calm under pressure.”
Sure, buddy. And I’m a commercial pilot of the monkeys flying out of my ass.
Over on Gab, the Twitter alternative for Nazis and other unpleasant people, some greeted the news of Shults’ heroism with jokes and complaints.
But the most extraordinary response on Gab came from a woman who thought Shults was a hero — but remained convinced that she shouldn’t have been allowed to fly in the Navy in the first place.
Naturally, the fellow in the Men Going Their Own Way subreddit have their own opinions about Shults, very few of them positive. One commenter blamed her for the death of a passenger who had a heart attack after the explosion broke a window and depressurized the cabin.
![rocketman1899[S] 5 points 23 hours ago* I don't know, a dead passenger, makes her less of a hero to me. I mean for all we know she could have over spun that engine, causing it to fly apart. Either way she is not a "Hero", at best she did her job. Just like countless men before that never were given that title because they didn't have a vagina.](https://i0.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/cyfrvgtuibhnjok.png?resize=470%2C465&ssl=1)
Thanks for your insights on heroism and responsibility, dude sitting on his ass posting on Reddit.
Several commenters, unsurprisingly, used the news as an opportunity to talk shit about women in general.
In recent days, this last guy has spent many hours on Reddit complaining about “lazy and entitled” female dentists, warning his fellow MGTOWs of the perils of standing behind women in lines, and sniffing that an attractive women with a bit of a belly is “repulsive.” But apparently his life is so difficult and dangerous that an exploding jet engine doesn’t count as a “real emergency.”
What a man, what a man, what a man, what a really crap man.
I honestly wonder what would be the reaction of the Mgwoters if they were in that plane? Would like all them try and bum-rush to the cabin to take over once they heard their pilot was a ＦＥＭＡＬＥ or just pretend it was a dream, or try to create some pseudo-scientific, probably transphobic reason for why she was able to land?
Global FAA, eh? Sure buddy. Must’ve been set up by the NWO, One World government.
In the seminal military science fiction novel, Starship Troopers, by Robert A. Heinlein, the pilots in the futuristic military were predominately women because Heinlein thought they had better hand/eye coordination. That was 1959. These whiny children can just shut-up.
@Bakunin:
Not only that, but it’s the he’s saying it’s the Global Federal Aviation Administration. Because America is the world!
I think, when it comes to men qualified to make an assessment on whether Tammie Jo Shult’s actions were heroic or not, I’m going to go with Captain Sullenberger’s (Miracle on the Hudson) assessment of the situation:
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/04/19/us/sully-southwest-airlines-explosion.html
And despite what the first tweeter thinks, aren’t investigations into accidents like this routine? In other words, Sully wasn’t being picked on because he was a man, it was because they wanted to find out what really happened to that flight that day.
Or am I misunderstanding something here?
My wife is suggesting that that first guy may have played a pilot in a commercial once. That’s the closest to commercial pilot that seems possible.
What is the Global FAA? Global Federation for Asinine Assfacts?
About halfway through the post I was thinking “well, at least they aren’t blaming the explosion on her.” Then I got to rocketman’s post.
http://www.reactiongifs.com/r/xpectd.gif
And what the hell news are they watching and reading that they never see men called heroes? Men are hailed as heroes all the time.
And faster reflexes and higher pain tolerance if I remember correctly
This dude obviously hasn’t seen Trump’s Twitter TL lately.
I’m pretty sure every time I’ve seen a man do the same thing, they’ve called him a hero, so I’m not sure what they’re botching about.
Male pilots don’t get called heros? BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, oh boys, is there a girl ‘stealing’ some of ‘your’ limelight? Poor little dears.
They do and they are. They’re also less prone to flash behaviour – which makes for a much more comfortable wing situation.
She gets a “Nicely done. My round.” from me – which is about the highest accolade a Yorkshireman can give. 😛
I’m still at work so no wall of text this time lol. I just wanted to thank everybody and especially Alan for his response to my second question about the racial and class differences in drug culture. I didn’t think anyone would see it since that post was days ago so I put my thank-you here. If anyone wouldn’t mind going back to that thread to also answer that second question Alan responded to would be so awesome. I obviously don’t expect it, but I would greatly appreciate it.
Have a lovely night and it’s after midnight so happy 420 everyone! Happy Weed Day! I swear to God this is still and will probably always be one of my favorite holidays even though only like 20% of the population is aware of it.
I was going to do my usual grumping that it’s a day that only makes sense in the USA and the Marshall Islands (wherever they are) out of the entire planet – but you’re enjoying it. Have fun. 🙂
She was a Navy F-18 pilot, which takes more hair than any pathetic misogynist/Incel can muster.
Sullenberger was never “under investigation”. That is a little creative licence on Clint Eastwood’s part to make his film more dramatic.
The incident was investigated because of course it was, and this incident will be investigated too because of course it will be, and the pilot’s testimony and expertise is always a key part of any investigation because duh.
Why do men alway have to shit on the accomplishments of women? She is as much a hero as Chesley Sullenberger and Jeffrey Skiles are for landing a Airbus A320-214 into the Hudson River in 2009. Her actions saved the lives of everone on that plane (one person was fatally injured in the initial explosion, but there was nothing that she could have done about it). So of course she’s a hero!
It pisses me off the way in which these douche bags think they are better pilots than she is (she is an ex navy fighter pilot, for fuck’s sake!) and the have never flown a plane in their lives!! I would love to see how they would handle that situation (or any emergency situation, really). Actually I don’t, because they would get everyone killed. The arseholes. ?
How the hell does one square “no women in the military” with “she’s a hero”? You couldn’t have one without the other here.
BTW, she was a hero while in the military, too…for pushing against that “no women in the military” glass ceiling until it cracked a bit for her. And she was a hero again for resigning her commission on principle.
Do these guys ever hear themselves talk? Or is this as close as they get to it?
http://i2.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/271/311/f4c.jpeg
Sometimes I wonder how shitty misogynists can get, and then they continuously impress me with their ability to plow through even the lowest expectations I can muster for their shittyness. Truely retch-worthy as usual!
Men: a woman shouldn’t be called a hero for just doing her job!
Also men: I deserve credit for what other men have done!
Imagine having so little going for you that you’re threatened by someone of another gender doing a job that you don’t yourself do, but which has until this point mostly been done by people of your gender.
Also, lol at the expert in jet propulsion who diagnoses that she ‘overspun’ the engine. Yeah, that’s really a thing.
And yes, Clint Eastwood rather disgustingly and dishonestly portrayed the air crash investigators as the villains of his film about US Airways Flight 1549, as it fits with his world view of individuals as heroes and institutions, particularly governmental ones, as bad.
In reality, air crash investigators and the massive system of regulations that they have inspired are responsible for saving far more lives than pilots like Sully and Shults. Not to take anything away from them, they are genuine heroes, but Eastwood shat over the people who have made a huge positive difference in this world.
@Bina Armchair generals and mall ninjas to the man.
It’s not the investigators that default to “blame the pilot.” That’s the companies and the idiots running them with an eye to the bottom line, not safety.
Engines are suppsed to fail safe – when a turbine blade gets thrown it’s supposed to be contained within the engine. The nacelles are also supposed to be armoured cabinwards, in case a blade does escape. Unfortunately, although the engine nacelles are handed in that respect the mountings are not, so a replacement engine can wind up on the wrong side – armour outwards, not inwards.
And that “overspun” arsehole. Can’t be done by any action of the pilot on a commercial jet, by design*. Even gating the throttles (they have what’s called a gate that limits how far you can push them forward to the normal “maximum” of 80%. To pass that, you have to either lift the throttles and push, or pull them sideways and push) will only give you 95% of the engines capability. Anyone who’s got even a passing familiarity with a cockpit knows that.
* Commercial jet engines I do know something about – if you’ve ever flown on a passenger jet you’ve both stayed in the air and stopped on landing thanks to my Dad. He liked to talk about his work at dinner.
Sorry for double, but as competence of female pilots is the subject of the post, and injustice is a general theme : The untold story of Mercury 13
It just popped up on my feed in one of those syncronicity moments.
@ shadowplay
I have a story relating to that from my MOD days. I can’t go into details; but it involves starting up a Typhoon engine with the protective cover still in place, and then straight faced bluffing that they thought they were testing that very feature.
(There’s also a better known tale of someone starting up a Tornado but the pilot leaving their sandwich box outside, with similar results.)
ETA: You probably know there’s an in-house magazine where people can report incidents on a ‘no names, no pack drill’ basis for H&S learning. There’s some amazing stories in that.