WHEN you are on board an aircraft, “This is the captain speaking” may well sound more reassuring than a message from the first officer. Yet crashes happen far more often when the captain, rather than the co-pilot, is flying the aircraft. This is counter-intuitive, since captains almost always have more flying experience than co-pilots.
The reason, says New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell in an alarming chapter of , is cultural. When the captain is flying, the first officer tends to defer, even when he or she suspects danger, while the captain does not hesitate in seizing the controls from…
