PC Gone Mad in B200 Accident Report

[601]

Gender-free plural pronouns: may be used throughout the report to refer to an individual (i.e. they, them and their).

So we have an aircraft crewed by one pilot. Within a couple of paragraphs, the ATSB is referring to the single pilot as "they"

The report then chops and changes between "the pilot" and "they"

It may have been used in educated speech and in all but the most formal writing to refer to singular indefinite pronouns or singular nouns of general personal reference but where an investigation into an accident has established that there was only one pilot, I would have thought that the use of "the Pilot" would be more appropriate and consistent.

Is this now the level of written English in the public service?

https://www.atsb.gov.au/publications/investigation_reports/2016/aair/ao-2016-170/

[compressor stall]

Following the accident, the pilot reported that their biggest lesson was not to hesitate during emergency procedures. They believed that their doubt in the veracity of the warning resulted in their hesitation while completing the four engine fire drill (memory) actions, resulting in them missing the step to feather the propeller.

Agreed, this would have to be one of the most bone jarring paragraphs I have read in a long time. And, if gender discretion is required, it could have simply been written thus (which is still just as clunky, but keeping the same sentence structure):

"The biggest lesson the pilot reported following the accident was not to hesitate during emergency procedures. The pilot believed that initial doubt in the veracity of the warning resulted in hesitation whilst completing the four engine fire drill (memory) actions, subsequently resulting in missing the step to feather the propeller."

----------------
Carson: May I take it that you think "The Priest and the Acolyte" was not immoral?
Wilde: It was worse; it was badly written.

[MickG0105]

So we have an aircraft crewed by one pilot. Within a couple of paragraphs, the ATSB is referring to the single pilot as "they"

The report then chops and changes between "the pilot" and "they"

It may have been used in educated speech and in all but the most formal writing to refer to singular indefinite pronouns or singular nouns of general personal reference but where an investigation into an accident has established that there was only one pilot, I would have thought that the use of "the Pilot" would be more appropriate and consistent.

Is this now the level of written English in the public service.

In short, yes. Per the Macquarie Dictionary;

they
ðeɪ/ (say dhay)
pronoun (personal), third person, plural, subjective (objective them)


plural of he, she, and it.
people in general: they say he is rich.
(used with singular force in informal contexts, and increasingly in formal contexts, in place of a gender-specific form where the sex of the antecedent is not determined): if anybody cheats they will be disqualified.


[Middle English; from Old Norse their those, related to Old English thā, plural of thæt THAT]

Usage: The use of they, them, and their as non-gender-specific singulars (as in a doctor and their patients) has always had currency in spoken English and is now increasingly accepted in written English. This use of they gives rise to the form themself for the reflexive pronoun by analogy with myself, himself, etc.

The usage is "increasingly accepted in written English". From the perspectives of clarity and brevity why would you persist in using two words "the Pilot" when one conveys the same meaning.

[cooperplace]

love it, absolutely love it.

[no_one]

I wonder if they argue about IFR minimims on the grammar forum......

[compressor stall]

Mick - There is no "clarity" using a pronoun that can apply to either a single person or multiple people. Reading the sentences as written has me rereading previous sentences to work out to whom the pronouns are referring. Hardly an exercise in clarity or brevity.

There are ways to avoid this abomination resulting from the search for the epicene pronoun. The use of "they" for the third person singular might be increasingly accepted - and I cannot argue with that - but it is lazy and there are alternatives.

[Desert Flower]

Pilot is now back working for the same company "they" were working for before "they" joined the RFDS - Broken Hill Aviation.

DF.

[Bull at a Gate]

What's wrong with using "he" if the pilot is a male and "she" if the pilot is a female? Like it was in the olden days.

[Centaurus]

What's wrong with using "he" if the pilot is a male and "she" if the pilot is a female? Like it was in the olden days
Its called "political correctness" much loved in government bureaucracy.:confused:

[kibz2005]

I wonder if they argue about IFR minimims on the grammar forum......

This is one of the funniest things I've ever read on the internet :D

[601]

As Compressor Stall alluded to, when I first read the report, I had to re-read paragraphs to confirm that it was in fact a single pilot operation and that a second crew member had not materialised out of the ether.

Being a technical report setting out the facts as determined by the investigators, accurate descriptions and terminology should take precedent over the push for "gender-free plural pronouns".

But in their rush for "gender-free plural pronouns," the ATSB overlooked the fact that there was only one pilot.

[Car RAMROD]

The pc/grammar is what concerns you folks on this report?

[Fris B. Fairing]

One that grates on me is "fishers" when you're not allowed to say "fishermen". When spoken, it's not immediately clear if one is talking about the catcher or the catchee.

[Lead Balloon]

The pc/grammar is what concerns you folks on this report?You're missing the point.

In order to work out the operational/safety implications of the report, you have to read what it says. If what it says is confusing, it makes it difficult to work out the implications.

[jonkster]

I read the report and due to the grammatical use of 'their' instead of 'he' totally failed to understand it, I could not grasp what it was trying to alert me to and as a result of that lack of understanding I subsequently crashed my aeroplane.

It is an outrage! An outrage I say!

The ATSB owe me a new aeroplane!

The sentence is totally indecipherable! I challenge anyone to make any sense of it. I certainly can't.

The world is going to pieces.





And don't get me started on people who put the toilet roll on backwards now get off my lawn!

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/11/24/article-2065714-0EE83AFF00000578-43_468x423.jpg

[Lookleft]

So why did the pilot get dismissed? The report suggests that CASA was deficient in not knowing how to interpret their own Part 61 requirements and the RFDS was deficient in not incorporating the change to the false fire detection warnings. Basically if the pilot had ignored the warning and just landed then he would still have a job with the RFDS! Clearly a case of damned if you do and damned if you don't.

Did the B200 that crashed at Essendon have a similar fire warning system and did that pilot also not shut down the engine properly.It seems as though the King Air has quite a few traps for young and old players.

[MickG0105]

Mick - There is no "clarity" using a pronoun that can apply to either a single person or multiple people. Reading the sentences as written has me rereading previous sentences to work out to whom the pronouns are referring. Hardly an exercise in clarity or brevity.

There are ways to avoid this abomination resulting from the search for the epicene pronoun. The use of "they" for the third person singular might be increasingly accepted - and I cannot argue with that - but it is lazy and there are alternatives.

Pronouns require an antecedent - the noun that they replace - they don't just sit there on their Pat (or Patricia) Malone. In the report in question for the most part there is only one character - the pilot - and where there are additional characters such as the operator or the trainer the actual noun phrase always immediately precedes the pronoun.

The ATSB has been writing reports this way for what? at least a year, probably longer. I'd hazard a guess that if it wasn't for the fact that they recently started flagging the use of gender-free pronouns in the footnotes no one would be complaining (well, they certainly weren't a year ago).

Addendum.

Near as I can tell the ATSB has been using "they" and "their" as singular non-gender pronouns in their reports since at least April 2015 (see AO-2013-136 Final – 7 April 2015; "The pilot’s logbook indicated that, prior to the flight, they had accrued a total of 2,316 hours helicopter flight time, of which 561 hours were in 412 helicopters."). They have only started drawing attention to this practice by way of a footnote (viz Gender-free plural pronouns: may be used throughout the report to refer to an individual (i.e. they, them and their).) since May this year.

It's interesting, if not instructive, that for two years readers have been blissfully unaware of, and presumably not confused by, this usage and that the matter seems to have become an issue only after its somewhat well established use was specifically highlighted to readers.

[ironbutt57]

from my experience in these aircraft, one has a clear enough view of the engine in the -200 to determine if it is blazing away or not....

[601]

It's interesting, if not instructive, that for two years readers have been blissfully unaware of, and presumably not confused by, this usage and that the matter seems to have become an issue only after its somewhat well established use was specifically highlighted to readers.

Could the reason be is that not all reports are read by everyone. I only read the reports that are of interest to me, aircraft type, type of operation etc., It is the first time that I have noticed the use of gender-free pronouns. The reason I picked it up was not the footnote but the the report referring to "the pilot" and in the next paragraph referring to the pilot as "they."

For the last 25 years I have been writing manuals and reports for the aviation industry. When referring to a human in the sharp end, it was "the pilot," "the flight crew" or in a multi-crew situation, "the pilot in command" or "the co-pilot."

It grates as much as using "guys"

[compressor stall]

It's interesting, if not instructive, that for two

No, I remember seeing it in a report some time ago and there was a discussion here about it too.

It annoyed me then and continues to annoy me now.

[Car RAMROD]

You're missing the point.

In order to work out the operational/safety implications of the report, you have to read what it says. If what it says is confusing, it makes it difficult to work out the implications.

Oh yes, yes I'm sorry. This thread topic is concern about "how" the report was written.
Here I was thinking people might be more concerned over things like training, mishandling an engine shutdown, oversight etc.
I'm in the wrong thread.

Lookleft, as for your remark about the EN crash. Maybe. Anything is possible. But it would surprise me.

[A37575]

The ATSB has been writing reports this way for what? at least a year, probably longer

Oh how I miss the clarity of writing of Mac Job in his Aviation Safety Digest series of yesteryear. Thank goodness I still have them in my library and read them over again out of the sheer pleasure of his prose.
By the way, has anyone noticed another recent trend in ATSB reports where the author of the report piles on the praise to crews for using good CRM, TEM and other buzz words.
One recent example comes to mind.

Quote: "Safety message

In this case, the crew showed a high level of professionalism in response to a weather related event. The crew demonstrated high levels of communication and coordination, promptly applied checklists and procedures." Unquote.

Yet on the other hand ATSB have a note in their reports saying, among other things, that their policy is not to apportion blame on anyone. So they coyly avoid saying the pilot did a lousy job and should have gone around and instead did a bastard of a landing which blew all the tyres.:ok:

[MickG0105]

No, I remember seeing it in a report some time ago and there was a discussion here about it too.

It annoyed me then and continues to annoy me now.

Looks like it was first raised by Centaurus in October last year with regards to AO-2016-075
Final – 14 October 2016; some 18 months after the practice was first introduced.

I'm quite traditional in my approach to the English language, particularly written English. That is in part a product of my experience as a staff officer in the military; on arriving at my HQ posting there were two books on my desk - the JSP (AS) 101 Manual of Service Writing and Fowler's Modern English Usage - and my SO1 emphasised the ABC of effective writng; Accuracy, Brevity and Clarity. That said, I understand that English usage is fluid and, for traditionalists, annoyingly so at times.

In the report mentioned in this thread, "they" is used as a non-gender singular pronoun nearly 30 times. On every occasion it is preceded by its antecedent, "the pilot", and generally quite closely preceded by it; on average only 15 words separate the antecedent and the pronoun although the worst case is 43 words. The antecedent and the pronoun never fall in different paragraphs (so I can't see how the report can be said to be "referring to "the pilot" and in the next paragraph referring to the pilot as "they.""); at worst the antecedent and the pronoun are separated by a sentence.

In short, given the constraints associated with non-gender singular pronouns, the author has taken all reasonable measures to ensure that the document is understandable. You may not agree with the style and word choices but that doesn't make the document abstruse.

[Judd]

You may not agree with the style and word choices but that doesn't make the document abstruse.


Mick. WTF does the word "abstruse" mean? :ok: I suspect most Pprune readers would have to look it up in a dictionary.
That said, I understand that English usage is fluid and, for traditionalists, annoyingly so at times. Quite so. See abstruse :D

[Bull at a Gate]

Can we imagine a judge sentencing an offender in a sexual assault case: "the offender then exposed their penis..."

The unstated premise behind the use of plural pronouns is that if the sex of the pilot is identified then a reader will assume that the sex is relevant to what happened. I just don't believe that the premise is accurate.

All that happens is that the reports are made less comprehensible than they could be. Anything that diverts the reader away from the message, and many of us are diverted, is something which should be avoided.

[Desert Flower]

Can we imagine a judge sentencing an offender in a sexual assault case: "the offender then exposed their penis..."


Given the current way people identify as other than what they were born as...;-)

DF.

[Eddie Dean]

Given the current way people identify as other than what they were born as...;-) DF.Good point DF, and may apply to some pilots.

[pithblot]

Shame it's found its way into aviation. Unfortunately, we can expect a lot more or this self righteous PC bull**** as the Leftist/ Green juggernaut barrels down the road, destroying what remains of our traditional western culture.

This is a really good read; The Dull, Boring and Predictable Left. (https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2017/07/dull-boring-predictable-left/)