I think the natural, or perhaps reflexive, tendency of any group -- be it a corporation, professional group, anybody -- is to rally around the group and defend itself and its members, even when they're clearly responsible for errors or wrong-doing. This is why I think the resolution of the film is a bit unreal. The metallurgy people had actually overlooked the issue of metal fatigue, since only Stewart was pursuing it: Jack (not John) Hawkins had in any case just come on the scene, and the company was plainly shown to be willing to jettison Honey (Stewart) to save its own reputation, at least before he was found to have been right. In real life, I think Honey, while he probably couldn't have been outright fired, would have soon found himself transferred to other duties elsewhere, someplace where he couldn't cause further problems for the ownership. And the aircraft company (and the airline) would have taken the lion's share of the credit for "protecting" the flying public and solving the problem, even though they had previously rejected Honey's findings and had fought against any inference that the Reindeer were unsafe. Whistle-blowers may fare better today than in earlier years, but the power still remains with those who caused the problem, few of whom pay for their mistakes, and many of whom continue to wield control of their enterprises (corporate, governmental, whatever).
I agree, the fact that the companies involved were now nationalized would add another complication to affairs. (This film was made in 1951, when the Labour government was in its sixth -- and final -- year of governing after WWII, and it had long since nationalized these and many other companies. The Royal Aircraft Establishment in the film was a real entity, and a government-run company.) But at that time, nationalization and the like was generally popular with, or at least not seriously opposed by, most of the British public, and the government -- as I said, like any government, any group -- would do whatever it could to avoid responsibility for a problem, then take credit for a fix it had initially opposed (much as today's Congressional Republicans denounce economic stimulus legislation even as they grab millions for their own states, then claim credit for projects funded by the legislation they had actually voted against).
Labour's ruinous economic policies did indeed have long-term deleterious consquences for British industry, but at the time, any steps seen as "redressing" Britain's notorious class differences, and the privileges of the few vs. the hard lives of the working class, were popular. Even the Conservatives, who swept back into power under Churchill later that year, never took steps to undo any of the changes wrought by Labour, which remained fixed in British life until the country was near economic collapse in the late 70s, when Thatcher came in and changed the country's economic set-up -- at least to some extent. Churchill and the Conservatives were thrown out in 1945 because, with the war now ending, they offered nothing to the average voter for the future -- no program or promises or willingness to change things, or any indication they realized the yearning for a better life of most hard-hit Britons, while Labour understood the public mood and offered the chance of making things better. People were grateful to Churchill but he was seen as out of touch, which to a large extent he was, if you know about the campaigns waged by each side in '45.
As far as a scenario such as the one in this film is concerned, if anything, people would have been far more forgiving of a government-run industry, as it was perceived as at least working for the people and preserving jobs, than they would have been toward a private company, which would have been portrayed as a heartless, uncaring industry bent on profit for the few at the expense, even lives, of others. And there was (and continues to be: see Toyota) quite a lot of history in the western world of companies behaving in exactly that way to give such a view a great deal of credence.
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Butteoid
14 years ago
I always loved this film, since first seeing it in the 1960s as a kid. (And as cheesy as the special effects look today, I thought they were pretty cool in 1963!)
For a remake, we could have an engineer at Toyota finding a hardware/software glitch in fly-by-wire throttles and being unable to convince company officials to act.
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bravehome
13 years ago
I joined American Airlines in April of 1979, working in their computer department. This was just one month before the tragic crash of Flight 191 in May.
My first major job was to go through the passenger list of all people on that aircraft to hand over to investigating authorities. I can tell you I could barely read through the tears.
When it was discovered that an AA employee had come up with a new procedure to save man-hours and theorized it would improve safety (though this proved in error through a combination of ergonomics and DC-10 design flaws), AA neither attempted to cover this up nor avoid criticism and blame. They were devastated. There was a pride of doing things well, not just for business for the safety of the passengers that permeated AA at that time, and from the CEO Al Casey down to that mechanic, this truly haunted them for the rest of their days.
Regarding this film, I think both the President and the head of Metallurgy were anxious to be very fair to Honey (remember the scene in the President's office after Honey had trashed the plane). Perhaps the Board was eager to jettison Honey, but then Boards are not necessarily members of the company itself but officers of other companies whose duty is to 'protect the value of the business' they are hired to govern.
No business is perfect. This is certainly recognized in the movie by the attenuation of testing hours from 24x7 to 8x7 to accommodate the community (to preserve them from the racket in off hours). But note the willingness of the company to go right to 24x7 to determine if Honey was right after the trashing of the plane, and the fact they let the tests continue well beyond the 1440 hours (watching their clocks all the while).
We get a lot of our impressions from the media, who seem more and more to think it’s their duty to highlight failure and bad news, and not the many good things going on in business today. There have always been some bad corporations, or at least bad officers in corporatons; but I’m betting there are many times more businesses trying to do right by their customers and their employees. It’s like your acquaintances – how many of them are truly selfish, uncaring, and evil? Probably less than 1%. Yet most of what we hear in the media is about that 1%, not the 99% who however imperfect are striving to make the world around them a better place for themselves, their families and their community.
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Molly-31
13 years ago
And that is why my mother and I, having to fly every few months in the mid- to late 70s, flew AA and no other. Thank you.
Let's just say that God doesn't believe in me.
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hobnob53
13 years ago
I'm glad to hear your experiences, but it's a question how widespread such inclinations or practices are.
Shortly aftert his film was released, the British Comet jet airliner began crashing all over the world, yet BOAC persisted in passing the jet as fit for flight and refused to ground it for any significant length of time until two or three other Comets had gone down, after which they finally grounded the aircraft and discovered the flaw in its design.
I don't indulge in cartoonish depictions of people or organizations, but the fact remains that most companies deem it easier to pay off claims than fix a problem ahead of time. History is replete with such examples.
The fact is most corporations' natural inclination is to protect their good name and deny any responsibility for error. This is true of the airline industry, though the scrutiny of governmental agencies and competition make it harder for airline companies or plane manufacturers to deny responsibility for problems than similar organizations can get away with in many other industries.
As far as this movie goes, I just do not believe that a company would so openly welcome evidence of their failure, and the millions in costs this would entail, as is depicted in the film. True, they'd try to correct a problem once they'd been convinced it existed, but they would certainly deny that any such actions would have been the result of a whistle-blower, or that any "serious" issue existed beforehand: it would have been put down to some routine or preventive action on the part of a "vigilant" airline. On the record, virtually all big entities -- corporate, governmental, or other -- attempt to cover up their faults, or try to at least mitigate their own responsibility. No Highway itself shows directors of the "Establishment" doing whatever they can to discredit Honey and preserve a false, flawless image of British transatlantic aviation, at any cost.
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bravehome
13 years ago
I believe the company employees, even its officials (and remember Directors are not necessarily members of that company) are depicted as wanting to be fair and do the right thing. This is clearly shown by the attitudes of the company President and the Head of Metallurgy. To be fair, they may also have thought themselves indemnified from liability, as Honey did not release anything official to them, only a preliminary general statement of concern.
It was Honey's desire to wait until all the evidence was in before filing an official report that legally could have gotten the company off the hook.
Therefore I find it very believable that the people in the company could support the safety findings of the final test, corroborated with the Labrador tail section findings, to then pull all the planes from circulation until their issues could be addressed, as only at this time was there positive proof of a need for action.
I, and my father before me (he head of Operations/Flight Control for Continental for 43 years, I have been in the business for 42 years now) have been involved in the airline industry for a very long time. True, I have not met with every employee of the industry, but those I have met with, which includes CEOs, Presidents, Directors and many line workers, have always evinced a very serious and dedicated attitude towards safety.
I can only speak from this personal experience, but I cannot believe that experience (broad as it is) is unique.
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hobnob53
13 years ago
Perhaps I have too jaded a view based on reading of too many irrepsonsible actions on the part of "powers-that-be" in many industries. One reason the airline industry might be better at tending to problems is that, unlike, say, a mine operator, they owe their livelihood directly to the public; therefore, they have to pay close attention to safety to insure they stay in business. Companies that do not deal directly with the public -- ordinary consumers don't go into mines for their coal, or into slaughterhouses for their meat -- might be more inclined to try to get away with things than someone on the front lines, dealing directly with the public.
But remember that in the film, the directors were prepared to condemn Honey as having "an unbalanced mind" -- not simply say he was mistaken, or the evidence wasn't all in -- but to throw him to the wolves and, as Honey himself complains, lose his research even though it may have some truth to it. Whether the directors were all in the industry itself is irrelevant. They ran the Establishment and were prepared to drop the matter altogether and scapegoat an innocent man in order to prevent further damage to British aviation (as they also say at the meeting).
The fact that in real life BOAC delayed doing anything (or really, anything much) about the Comet until several had gone down indicates a reluctance to put safety before reputation.
Also, Honey's desire to wait until all the evidence was in is depicted, properly, as a bad thing, in that he was willing to allow people to board the Reindeer and fly in it even with their lives at risk, simply because he was detached from the real, human consequences of the problem he was investigating. To him, it was just an academic exercise.
But I agree, I've known a few commercial pilots and they and the people they work with were all concerned first and foremost with safety. But the fact that they were the ones whose lives were on the line is a powerful motivator. The front office might not always have such a sense of urgency, or at least it might be overly concerned with misguided conceptions of public relations and corporate reputation.
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bravehome
13 years ago
I can understand the jadedness (word? :)) of many readers of the media -- after all the media seems to think that it's their duty to highlight mainly the negative aspects of humanity for the reading public.
As I mentioned in an earlier thread, we cannot judge the world by what the media has to say about it. That's because the media focuses only on the negative. Who can say how many wonderful and inspiring things have been done in the airline, or any industry, that never get reported? Based on my experience, 1000s of things on a daily basis worldwide. But they never get the publicity that the occasional negative thing does.
As I said earlier, probably less than 1% of all the people we have ever met are truly selfish, uncaring people. If this is true in our wide circle of acquaintances, I venture it is true throughout the world. Thousands of acquaintances after all is a pretty good sampling pool for humanity.
That is why we must all be careful what lessons we learn from the media -- that source is surely a biased, unrepresentative sampling of all things that occur...
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hobnob53
13 years ago
It's easy to criticize the media (and Heaven knows they often deserve it), but that's basically a rather glib, meaningless cop-out. The truth is that most media try to report the news. There's some truth to the old adage that if they reported the "good things" that are done every day, then we should worry, because then such things would be the exception, not the rule. As a minor elected official, and a journalist by training, I have had occasion to see how the media both succeed and fail in their news coverage, and I can be either critical or complimentary of them as the circumstance warrants. The implication that everything the media say is biased or incomplete and therefore never to be trusted is ridiculous. Like any other source of information, what you hear should be treated with an appropriate amount of skepticism, depending on the source.
If you're implying that corporations are more "truthful" or honest than the evil media, this is preposterous. The fact is that most companies try to get away with as much as possible, and that includes skimping on safety concerns whenever they can. Obviously this is a broad statement that varies from industry to industry, but it does constitute the basic norm. Take the auto industry. For decades, it has fought every safety concern tooth and nail and refused to take any positive actions until compelled to by government action (and the media spotlight). Seat belts, air bags, anti-lock brakes, the list is endless. None of these things became part of the American automobile until Detroit was forced to make the changes by a public aroused to the flaws in their cars that were killing thousands every year. Even airlines, where as I mentioned earlier there is direct contact between the companies and the consumer, have skimped on safety in some ways -- notably in the utter disregard shown by some airlines toward the critical issue of pilot fatigue (witness the crash near Buffalo, NY, the other year). This is an example of a thoroughly foreseeable problem that some airlines, mostly feeder and commuter ones, simply ignore.
In any case, all this is off the track. You don't have to read newspapers or watch the news to understand that a primary motivation of many industries is to get away with the least expense, least bother, and least interference from regulation, as possible. History is replete with the consequences of such attitudes, from before the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire a century ago to the present.
This has nothing to do with individual acts of kindness by average people. Of course, there are thousands -- millions -- of such acts daily. But there is often a disconnect between how people behave in their private lives vs. how they behave in a group -- and no rule even here. Many people would never put someone in danger in their private life, but would go along with policies set by their workplace that cause harm, even death, to unseen others. On the other hand, some people who can be nasty or dishonest personally can suddenly flip and become the most generous and concerned people around when placed in a group that values such selflessness (e.g., the military, a church, charities, etc.).
I think this debate has run its course, but the basic issue as far as No Highway is concerned is whether the company would welcome evidence of their error, and the loss of millions, with such equanimity, even eagerness, as many of the characters in the film evince. I believe that while they would ultimately have to accept the truth and take action, none of them would be so philospohical about it, nor would they welcome Honey's actions or credit him with finding the problem in the first place. Unfortunately, too often normal human practice is to cover up, defend the status quo, and discredit any evidence that threatens to disrupt their affairs; there are people in the film who behave this way. These men may be nice guys in private life and not heartless killers in their careers, but they still have conflicting impulses between doing what's right for the company, and just doing what's right.
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Gatorman9
13 years ago
I hate to say it, but in addition to having a metallurgy background I have been a lawyer for over twenty years, and have defended many companies in lawsuits originating with accidents of various kinds. Whether a company wants to be very forward about their failings or wants to cover them up is something that can go either way. I'm delighted to hear that the airlines discussed here seem to take their primary obligations seriously, but as was shown regarding the loss of the space shuttle CHALLENGER, you can't take it for granted that every company will always be straightforward in acknowledging their failings.
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