But at thirty-eight thousand feet, the air is so thin that TO/GA doesn’t work. A plane can’t draw additional thrust at that height, and raising the nose simply increases the severity of a stall. At that altitude, the only correct choice is lowering the nose. In his startled panic, however, Bonin made a second mistake, a mental misstep that is a cousin to cognitive tunneling: He sought to aim the spotlight in his head onto something familiar. Bonin fell back on a reaction he had practiced repeatedly, a sequence of moves he had learned to associate with emergencies. He fell into what psychologists call “reactive thinking.”
Reactive thinking is at the core of how we allocate our attention, and in many settings, it’s a tremendous asset. Athletes, for example, practice certain moves again and again so that, during a game, they can think reactively and execute plays faster than their opponents can respond. Reactive thinking is how we build habits, and it’s why to-do lists and calendar alerts are so helpful: Rather than needing to decide what to do next, we can take advantage of our reactive instincts and automatically proceed. Reactive thinking, in a sense, outsources the choices and control that, in other settings, create motivation.
But the downside of reactive thinking is that habits and reactions can become so automatic they overpower our judgment. Once our motivation is outsourced, we simply react. One study conducted by Strayer, the psychologist, in 2009 looked at how drivers’ behaviors changed when cars were equipped with features such as cruise control and automatic braking systems that allowed people to pay less attention to road conditions.
“These technologies are supposed to make driving safer, and many times, they do,” said Strayer. “But it also makes reactive thinking easier, and so when the unexpected startles you, when the car skids or you have to brake suddenly, you’ll react with practiced, habitual responses, like stomping on the pedal or twisting the wheel too far. Instead of thinking, you react, and if it’s not the correct response, bad things happen.”
Inside the cockpit, as the alarms sounded and the cricket chirped, the pilots were silent. Robert, the copilot, perhaps lost in his own thoughts, didn’t reply to Bonin’s question—“I’m in TO/GA, right?”—but instead tried once again to beckon the captain, who was still resting in the hold. If Bonin had paused to consider the basic facts—he was in thin air, a stall alarm was sounding, the plane couldn’t safely go higher—he would have immediately realized he needed to lower the airplane’s nose. Instead, he relied on behaviors he had practiced hundreds of times and pulled back on the stick. The plane’s nose increased to a terrifying eighteen-degree pitch as Bonin pushed the throttle open. The plane moved higher, touched the top of an arc, and then started dropping, its nose still pointed upward and the engines at full thrust. The cockpit began shaking as the buffeting grew more pronounced. The plane was falling fast.
“What the hell is happening?” the copilot asked. “Do you understand what’s happening, or not?”
“I don’t have control of the plane anymore!” Bonin shouted. “I don’t have control of the plane at all!”
In the cabin, passengers probably had little idea anything was wrong. There were no alarms they could hear. The buffeting likely felt like normal turbulence. Neither pilot ever made an announcement of any kind.
The captain finally entered the cockpit.
“What the hell are you doing?” he asked.
“I don’t know what’s happening,” Robert said.
“We’re losing control of the airplane!” Bonin shouted.
“We lost control of the airplane and we don’t understand at all,” Robert said. “We’ve tried everything.”
Flight 447 was now sinking at a rate of ten thousand feet per minute. The captain, standing behind the pilots and perhaps overwhelmed by what he saw, uttered a curse word and then remained silent for forty-one seconds.
“I have a problem,” Bonin said, the panic audible in his voice. “I have no more displays.” This was not correct. The displays—the screens on his instrument panel—were providing accurate information and were clearly visible. But Bonin was too overwhelmed to focus.
“I have the impression we’re going crazily fast,” Bonin said. The plane, in fact, at this point was moving far too slowly. “What do you think?” Bonin asked as he reached for the lever that would raise the speed-brakes on the wing, slowing the plane even more.
“No!” shouted the copilot. “Above all, don’t extend the brakes!”
“Okay,” Bonin said.
“What should we do?” the copilot asked the captain. “What do you see?”
“I don’t know,” the captain said. “It’s descending.”
Over the next thirty-five seconds, as the pilots shouted questions, the plane dropped another nine thousand feet.
“Am I going down now?” Bonin asked. The instruments in front of him could have easily answered that question.
“You’re going down down down,” the copilot said.
“I’ve been at full back stick for a while,” Bonin said.
“No, no!” the captain shouted. The plane was now less than ten thousand feet above the Atlantic Ocean. “Don’t climb!”
“Give me the controls!” the copilot said. “The controls! To me!”
“Go ahead,” Bonin says, finally releasing the stick. “You have the controls. We’re still in TO/GA, right?”
As the copilot took over, the plane fell another six thousand feet closer to the sea.
“Watch out, you’re pitching up there,” the captain said.
“I’m pitching up?” the copilot replied.
“You’re pitching up,” the captain said.
“Well, we need to!” Bonin said. “We’re at four thousand feet!”
By now, the only way the craft could pick up enough speed was to lower its nose into a dive and let more air flow over the wings. But with such a small distance between the plane and the ocean’s surface, there was no room to maneuver. A ground proximity warning began blaring, “SINK RATE! PULL UP!” The cockpit was filled with constant noise.
“You’re pitching up,” the captain told the copilot.
“Let’s go!” Bonin replied. “Pull up! Pull up! Pull up!”
The men stopped speaking for a moment.
“This can’t be true,” said Bonin. The ocean was visible through the cockpit’s windows. If the pilots had craned their necks, they could have made out individual waves.
“But what’s happening?” Bonin asked.
Two seconds later, the plane plunged into the sea.
II.
In the late 1980s, a group of psychologists at a consulting firm named Klein Associates began exploring why some people seem to stay calm and focused amid chaotic environments while others become overwhelmed. Klein Associates’ business was helping companies analyze how they make decisions. A variety of clients wanted to know why some employees made such good choices amid stress and time pressures, while other workers became distracted. More important, they wanted to know if they could train people to get better at paying attention to the right things.