The story of Korean Air comes in Chapter Seven, “The Ethnic Theory of Plane Crashes.” In the 1990s, this airline experienced a higher number of crashes than any other operating airline. Gladwell begins by providing the details of one particular Korean Air crash in August 1997, and then goes on to look at examples of other crashes. What seemed to be a contributing factor to the tragic pattern was the crew’s use of “mitigated speech.” The Korean Air pilots and crew members weren’t direct enough with one another during emergency situations. This was due to a factor within their cultural legacy. Some cultures tolerate ambiguity in language more than others.
We mitigate when we’re being polite, or when we’re ashamed or embarrassed, or when we’re being deferential to authority. If you want your boss to do you a favor, you don’t say, “I’ll need this by Monday.” You mitigate. You...
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say, “Don’t bother, if it’s too much trouble, but if you have a chance to look at this over the weekend, that would be wonderful.” In a situation like that, mitigation is entirely appropriate. In other situations, however – like a cockpit on a stormy night – it’s a problem.
Korean Air’s solution was to hire an American representative of Delta Air Lines to fix the problem in 2000. He changed the protocol so that all communication among Korean Air crew members would be in English. Employees who didn’t know English well or at all were taught the language. All of their commands in the air and with international air traffic controllers would be exchanged in English from this point on. This way, they could step out from the burdens of cultural legacy found in their own language. They would no longer have to follow their culture’s own rules of politeness. They could be as direct and as honest with one another as they needed to be. As a result, the airline broke the accident pattern. When Gladwell wrote this book, Korean Air’s record since 1999 was spotless. “Aviation experts will tell you that Korean Air is now as safe as any airline in the world,” he wrote. All because of a change in the language used by the pilots.