Can you die of distraction? On a cold evening on December 29th 1972, 176 people were on board the Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 on final approach to Miami, soon to land for New Year celebrations with friends and family. Despite having a veteran captain with nearly 30,000 flight hours under his belt, and despite there being no faulty equipment, at 11.42pm the plane crashed, skidded and broke up across the Florida everglades.
After extensive investigations, the supposed fault was discovered: the landing gear indicator light had burnt out. But how could a mere fused light-bulb fell an entire plane? After all, the landing gear could easily have been lowered manually. Following scrutiny of the black box recording, it was realised that the real problem was that the pilots were so preoccupied with trying to fix the light that they had inadvertently deactivated the autopilot, and failed to notice the altimeter reading gradually falling. That night, 101 people on board died because of a failure to see the bigger picture.
The real NHS crisis: seven-day care, or privatised care?
