I don't think this is grasping at straws. It's absolutely unprofessional for a pilot to suggest that the plane's survival is reliant on divine intervention. A pilot should be operating the plane and making decisions solely on well accepted science and should definitely not be scaring the passengers with talk like that.
Whether he's religious or not, or decides to pray or not - is separate to how good a pilot he is. (And honestly, sometimes these things are outside of his hands).
There are plenty of religious people who are good pilots.
There are plenty of non-religious people who are good pilots.
Unless you have some meaningful data, you can't really make a conclusion either way.
In terms of asking somebody to pray - I've never been particularly offended by that, no matter what the faith of the person. (I have my own faith). Unless of course they were asking me to pray for something that in itself is offensive - such as say, death to all Jews or something.
If they're asking me to pray for say, the safe return of their husband, or that their puppy dog might recover - I'd feel like a real jerk if I just said no, instead of just going, um sure? If they want me to pray with them in their language, sure.
> I'd feel like a real jerk if I just said no, instead of just going, um sure?
When the authority figure resorts to praying and asking you to pray to help them out of a tight spot, it's implicitly implying that they've lost control of the situation and there's no backup.
This is absolutely horrible from a control perspective. As the person who knows most about the operation of the airplane, it's your job to curb panic in the passengers and project a calm confident air.
The passengers are pretty much relying on your hands and your abilities as a pilot, and they have no opportunities to solve any problems. When you ask them to pray, you're basically throwing in the towel and pretty much saying you have no control over the situation, causing them to freak out and not adding anything to the situation. You need to project calm competence at this point, reassuring all the passengers that everything is under control and that everything is going to be fine.
This has nothing to do with religious beliefs and everything to do with command. Something that you might want to consider. It's as if in a combat situation your commanding officer asked you to pray for the safety of the platoon - panic is infectious.
I enjoy how you conflated religious freedom with maintaining order and discipline though. I guess we all read what we want to read into the situation.
That depends on the culture and what kind of response the pilot expects from the passengers. If one of the engines is spewing smoke and rattling like a broken washing machine, there's probably enough panic already. Everything is obviously not going to be fine! Starting a prayer might actually have a calming effect in a deeply religious culture.
In my not-so-religious country, there's been a few highly publicized disasters where authority figures tried to look as if they had the situation under control when they didn't, and only made things worse by making everyone underestimate the severity of the situation. People here don't trust anymore any authority figure who says everything is under control.
> and what kind of response the pilot expects from the passengers.
and
> only made things worse by making everyone underestimate the severity of the situation.
The point is that there is absolutely no action that the passengers can take the influence the result in a good way, and plenty of actions that the passenger can take to influence the result in a bad way.
At this point, the pilot is thinking that he's trying to get the airplane working again, and if he doesn't he'll have to ditch somewhere and evacuate the plane.
If everybody is calm and follows the orders of the stewardesses, the chances of survival are much higher than if people freak out and try doing actions to maximize their own personal survival.
Again, the main point is that your credibility after this accident is of little import. And you want people to underestimate the severity of the situation - since nothing they can do can help the situation.
> If one of the engines is spewing smoke and rattling like a broken washing machine, there's probably enough panic already. Everything is obviously not going to be fine!
Considering that most two engine planes can land and fly for considerable distances with one engine, everything _is_ going to be fine, and your job is to calm everybody down. A simple statement saying that we're having technical issues with one engine, but we're equipped to make a safe landing with one engine and to expect a lot of turbulence is infinitely better than screaming over the intercom "We're fucked, get your prayer beads out. Only God can save us now"
> Whether he's religious or not, or decides to pray or not - is separate to how good a pilot he is.
I totally agree with this. A pilot can be religious, he's free to pray in a bad situation, particularly if it helps him calm down. However this is separate from the pilot's work. His religion should not affect his decision making as a pilot.
> In terms of asking somebody to pray - I've never been particularly offended by that, no matter what the faith of the person.
It's not that praying is offensive, it's that his suggestion that the passengers pray implies that their survival is at least somewhat dependent on divine intervention. Going back to my first point, it's fine for the pilot or passengers to believe this in a personal capacity but in a professional capacity it's the pilot's responsibility to remain purely in a realm of fact.
Plus, this implication could (and very well should) scare the shit out of the passengers. You definitely don't want them panicking.
