NYT's Matthew Wald Fabricates A Quote
...from Jeffrey Hefner, the safety rep at
Southwest's union SWAPA. According to SWAPA here,
Wald's Times story (at the IHT here)
quoted Hefner as making this somewhat tactless
statement:
Only problem is... Wald didn't talk to Hefner, according to SWAPA. At all. "The pilot was never interviewed by Mr. Wald." So where did the quote come from?
SWAPA sent its complaints to the Times's useless "public editor," Byron Calame. Calame appears to see his duty as helping the cast of fabricators bar the door, as the reading peasantry comes up the hill with torches and pitchforks, and no doubt he will do just that, and come up with the interesting and far-fetched excuses for fabrication, slant and slander for which he's become known.
In the Big Apple, journalism never falls too far from the tree of the fruit of Jayson Blair. Do reporters like Wald think they can impute their own words to other, real people?
As usual, complete story is below the fold, as the Times has already scrolled it off into Select-land, which is populated only by those that think Dowd's bitterness and Krugman's innumeracy are worth paying extra for... as if splenetic spinsters and off-topic professors were rare treasures. Nope, they're as common as fabricating Timesmen. (One is put in mind of Walter Duranty, who looked at the wonder that was Stalinism and cooed that he had, "no doubt that the solution to the agrarian problem had been found." Final solution, perhaps; he was writing of the democide of millions that Ukrainians name the holodomor. And "Stalin [had grown] into a really great statesman." The spirit of Walter Duranty animates Bill Keller and the men and women of today's Times). Wald's story may last a little longer up here at the Times's rump European edition, the International Herald Tribune.
I've also put the complete statement from SWAPA beneath the fold (and at the bottom of the Times story).
"[Other lines' pilots]'re a bunch of spoiled brats," said Jeffrey Hefner, the safety chairman of the union that represents pilots at Southwest Airlines, who have always flown longer hours than pilots at older airlines. "Historically, this has been a really cushy job once you get to the majors," he said. "You make a lot of money, and you don't have to fly a lot. But there had to be a market balancing at some point."
Only problem is... Wald didn't talk to Hefner, according to SWAPA. At all. "The pilot was never interviewed by Mr. Wald." So where did the quote come from?
SWAPA sent its complaints to the Times's useless "public editor," Byron Calame. Calame appears to see his duty as helping the cast of fabricators bar the door, as the reading peasantry comes up the hill with torches and pitchforks, and no doubt he will do just that, and come up with the interesting and far-fetched excuses for fabrication, slant and slander for which he's become known.
In the Big Apple, journalism never falls too far from the tree of the fruit of Jayson Blair. Do reporters like Wald think they can impute their own words to other, real people?
As usual, complete story is below the fold, as the Times has already scrolled it off into Select-land, which is populated only by those that think Dowd's bitterness and Krugman's innumeracy are worth paying extra for... as if splenetic spinsters and off-topic professors were rare treasures. Nope, they're as common as fabricating Timesmen. (One is put in mind of Walter Duranty, who looked at the wonder that was Stalinism and cooed that he had, "no doubt that the solution to the agrarian problem had been found." Final solution, perhaps; he was writing of the democide of millions that Ukrainians name the holodomor. And "Stalin [had grown] into a really great statesman." The spirit of Walter Duranty animates Bill Keller and the men and women of today's Times). Wald's story may last a little longer up here at the Times's rump European edition, the International Herald Tribune.
I've also put the complete statement from SWAPA beneath the fold (and at the bottom of the Times story).
Nothing but gray skies: Airline pilots in
U.S. struggle with new work rules
By Matthew L. Wald The New York Times
TUESDAY, MARCH 7, 2006
WASHINGTON Within the world of aviation, airline pilots used to be one step down from astronauts. Now they feel one step up from bus drivers, at least in the United States.
With half the seats in U.S. airliners run by companies either in bankruptcy or limping out of it, even the pilots at the pinnacle - the ones who are within a few years of the mandatory retirement age of 60, flying the big planes and earning top dollar - are facing a new world.
Their pay and pensions have been cut, and they work more hours to earn it. In another concession to the airlines, their days are interrupted more than ever by long hours of unpaid idleness.
They say they try hard not to let these things break their concentration or interfere with their work, flying passengers by the hundreds around the world. They have piloted their planes to 40 million safe takeoffs and landings in the United States alone in the past five years, whether the airline was solvent or bankrupt or just squeaking by.
Some factors hurting American carriers, like high fuel prices, affect airlines elsewhere as well. But the extreme belt- tightening and wave of bankruptcies have been largely limited to the United States. There, the boardroom blues are working their way into the cockpit.
"My philosophy right now is, I just go to work," said a US Airways captain who, before his company's troubles, always loved to fly. He recently flew a 6a.m. flight from Newark, New Jersey, to Miami, then piloted a plane from Miami to Los Angeles the next evening, then a flight back to Newark, accumulating 15 paid hours for three days.
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration limits commercial pilots on domestic flights - measured from pushing back at one gate to arrival at another - to flying eight hours a day, 30 hours in seven days, 100 hours a month and 1,000 hours a year. The airlines do not exceed those limits, but many now schedule much closer to them.
The rules do not address the amount of time between flights, so a pilot could be in uniform 12 hours or more a day. There is a requirement for eight hours' rest time every 24 hours, however. And pilots acutely feel the difference between getting in a month of work in 14 days, compared with 18 days.
"They kind of bleed us out," the US Airways captain said, on condition he not be identified for fear of losing his job. Pilots for major carriers said they expected to be fired if they were publicly candid about the new conditions of their jobs.
A veteran United Airlines captain, who laments that when he retires in a few years his pension will be about one- fourth what he expected, said he had to shut it out of his mind to prevent the distraction from affecting his work.
The dissatisfaction at the top has not changed some basics of the field: Young people still dream of flying, and people who fly small planes still aspire to fly bigger ones. Legions of laid-off pilots hope to be hired back, even at reduced pay levels.
Airline pilots are reacting with more fortitude than other professionals might in the same circumstances, said Arnold Barnett, a professor of management science at the MIT Sloan School of Business.
"I cannot fathom how faculty would react if MIT abolished tenure, increased teaching loads and cut salaries by 35 percent because 'market conditions' had changed," he said.
Senior airline pilots, in dozens of interviews, spoke about feeling depressed and struggling not to let it affect their performance. Academics have noticed a change.
"The pilots are not a happy group right now," said Paul Fischbeck, a professor of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Fischbeck, who flew in the U.S. Navy and has colleagues who went on to fly for the airlines, said the change in financial circumstances and job security were good reasons to be unhappy.
But Fischbeck and others pointed out that the industry culture is such that pilots must face the hardship on their own. Other workers can seek professional counseling. With pilots, however, if they seek counseling and it gets reported to the aviation authority, "You can forget it, you're not coming back to work until you go through a lot," a US Airways pilot said. "The system requires us to deal with it ourselves. That makes it very difficult to go through what we just went through."
Maxine Lubner, director of the Aviation Institute at York College, at the City University of New York, said that morale, along with problems like "the distraction of not knowing where your pension is," certainly could not help safety.
But she said there was as yet no empirical evidence. Statistically, the airlines are in one of their safest periods ever, with about one fatal accident for every 15 million flights.
Airline executives say they do not know how to measure the effects on morale. Still, a US Airways spokesman, Carlo Bertolini, said, "No one's going to deny that US Airways employees have been through a tough time, with layoffs, changes in work rules and steps lowering costs. A lot of these sacrifices came from employees."
But, he said, "we all have a stake in the safety of the airline. We're definitely confident that all employees always have safety at the top of their mind."
Pilots say the same, but add that the change in schedules often means more fatigue.
"You can feel yourself getting to a point where you're beginning to make more little mistakes," said a senior captain at US Airways. "Most of the mistakes are caught very quickly, and most are very minor errors," but, "at that level of fatigue, after weeks or months of this without a break, it's easy to make a major mistake."
Not everyone agrees that the longer working schedule is a problem. "They're a bunch of spoiled brats," said Jeffrey Hefner, the safety chairman of the union that represents pilots at Southwest Airlines, who have always flown longer hours than pilots at older airlines.
"Historically, this has been a really cushy job once you get to the majors," he said. "You make a lot of money, and you don't have to fly a lot. But there had to be a market balancing at some point."
------------------
SWAPA Statement
Southwest Airlines Pilots’ Association (SWAPA) Questions Authenticity of Quotes in New York Times Article
Capt. Ike Eichelkraut, President of the Southwest Airlines Pilots’ Association, released the following statement in regard to an article that ran in the New York Times, March 10 edition, entitled “Airline Pilots Still Flying, but no Longer Quite So High,” by reporter Matthew Wald.
SWAPA sent letters to the ombudsman of the New York Times asking to have the quotes attributed to the proper individuals with a correction or a full retraction. SWAPA has urged the New York Times to conduct an investigation which SWAPA was confident will show the quotes are unsubstantiated. “SWAPA has a great relationship with our fellow professional organizations. We wanted to make sure our fellow pilots, other airline employees and the general public fully understand SWAPA finds the unsubstantiated quotes in the New York Times article offensive and detrimental to our members and other professional pilots everywhere,” said Capt. Carl Kuwitzky, SWAPA’s Vice President.
By Matthew L. Wald The New York Times
TUESDAY, MARCH 7, 2006
WASHINGTON Within the world of aviation, airline pilots used to be one step down from astronauts. Now they feel one step up from bus drivers, at least in the United States.
With half the seats in U.S. airliners run by companies either in bankruptcy or limping out of it, even the pilots at the pinnacle - the ones who are within a few years of the mandatory retirement age of 60, flying the big planes and earning top dollar - are facing a new world.
Their pay and pensions have been cut, and they work more hours to earn it. In another concession to the airlines, their days are interrupted more than ever by long hours of unpaid idleness.
They say they try hard not to let these things break their concentration or interfere with their work, flying passengers by the hundreds around the world. They have piloted their planes to 40 million safe takeoffs and landings in the United States alone in the past five years, whether the airline was solvent or bankrupt or just squeaking by.
Some factors hurting American carriers, like high fuel prices, affect airlines elsewhere as well. But the extreme belt- tightening and wave of bankruptcies have been largely limited to the United States. There, the boardroom blues are working their way into the cockpit.
"My philosophy right now is, I just go to work," said a US Airways captain who, before his company's troubles, always loved to fly. He recently flew a 6a.m. flight from Newark, New Jersey, to Miami, then piloted a plane from Miami to Los Angeles the next evening, then a flight back to Newark, accumulating 15 paid hours for three days.
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration limits commercial pilots on domestic flights - measured from pushing back at one gate to arrival at another - to flying eight hours a day, 30 hours in seven days, 100 hours a month and 1,000 hours a year. The airlines do not exceed those limits, but many now schedule much closer to them.
The rules do not address the amount of time between flights, so a pilot could be in uniform 12 hours or more a day. There is a requirement for eight hours' rest time every 24 hours, however. And pilots acutely feel the difference between getting in a month of work in 14 days, compared with 18 days.
"They kind of bleed us out," the US Airways captain said, on condition he not be identified for fear of losing his job. Pilots for major carriers said they expected to be fired if they were publicly candid about the new conditions of their jobs.
A veteran United Airlines captain, who laments that when he retires in a few years his pension will be about one- fourth what he expected, said he had to shut it out of his mind to prevent the distraction from affecting his work.
The dissatisfaction at the top has not changed some basics of the field: Young people still dream of flying, and people who fly small planes still aspire to fly bigger ones. Legions of laid-off pilots hope to be hired back, even at reduced pay levels.
Airline pilots are reacting with more fortitude than other professionals might in the same circumstances, said Arnold Barnett, a professor of management science at the MIT Sloan School of Business.
"I cannot fathom how faculty would react if MIT abolished tenure, increased teaching loads and cut salaries by 35 percent because 'market conditions' had changed," he said.
Senior airline pilots, in dozens of interviews, spoke about feeling depressed and struggling not to let it affect their performance. Academics have noticed a change.
"The pilots are not a happy group right now," said Paul Fischbeck, a professor of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Fischbeck, who flew in the U.S. Navy and has colleagues who went on to fly for the airlines, said the change in financial circumstances and job security were good reasons to be unhappy.
But Fischbeck and others pointed out that the industry culture is such that pilots must face the hardship on their own. Other workers can seek professional counseling. With pilots, however, if they seek counseling and it gets reported to the aviation authority, "You can forget it, you're not coming back to work until you go through a lot," a US Airways pilot said. "The system requires us to deal with it ourselves. That makes it very difficult to go through what we just went through."
Maxine Lubner, director of the Aviation Institute at York College, at the City University of New York, said that morale, along with problems like "the distraction of not knowing where your pension is," certainly could not help safety.
But she said there was as yet no empirical evidence. Statistically, the airlines are in one of their safest periods ever, with about one fatal accident for every 15 million flights.
Airline executives say they do not know how to measure the effects on morale. Still, a US Airways spokesman, Carlo Bertolini, said, "No one's going to deny that US Airways employees have been through a tough time, with layoffs, changes in work rules and steps lowering costs. A lot of these sacrifices came from employees."
But, he said, "we all have a stake in the safety of the airline. We're definitely confident that all employees always have safety at the top of their mind."
Pilots say the same, but add that the change in schedules often means more fatigue.
"You can feel yourself getting to a point where you're beginning to make more little mistakes," said a senior captain at US Airways. "Most of the mistakes are caught very quickly, and most are very minor errors," but, "at that level of fatigue, after weeks or months of this without a break, it's easy to make a major mistake."
Not everyone agrees that the longer working schedule is a problem. "They're a bunch of spoiled brats," said Jeffrey Hefner, the safety chairman of the union that represents pilots at Southwest Airlines, who have always flown longer hours than pilots at older airlines.
"Historically, this has been a really cushy job once you get to the majors," he said. "You make a lot of money, and you don't have to fly a lot. But there had to be a market balancing at some point."
------------------
SWAPA Statement
Southwest Airlines Pilots’ Association (SWAPA) Questions Authenticity of Quotes in New York Times Article
Capt. Ike Eichelkraut, President of the Southwest Airlines Pilots’ Association, released the following statement in regard to an article that ran in the New York Times, March 10 edition, entitled “Airline Pilots Still Flying, but no Longer Quite So High,” by reporter Matthew Wald.
“In an otherwise well written story highlighting the devastation which has occurred to many pilots as a result of 911, Mr. Wald credited a highly incendiary comment describing these victims as “spoiled brats” to a Southwest Airlines’ pilot. The pilot was never interviewed by Mr. Wald. Additionally, the tone of these quotes is the antithesis of the attitude of SWAPA members who share in understanding the sacrifice so many families have experienced in what is the worse downturn in civilian aviation history.”
SWAPA sent letters to the ombudsman of the New York Times asking to have the quotes attributed to the proper individuals with a correction or a full retraction. SWAPA has urged the New York Times to conduct an investigation which SWAPA was confident will show the quotes are unsubstantiated. “SWAPA has a great relationship with our fellow professional organizations. We wanted to make sure our fellow pilots, other airline employees and the general public fully understand SWAPA finds the unsubstantiated quotes in the New York Times article offensive and detrimental to our members and other professional pilots everywhere,” said Capt. Carl Kuwitzky, SWAPA’s Vice President.
Posted: Sunday - March 19, 2006 at 06:39 AM
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